Overrated

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

The Sum Of All Fears2 Out Of 5The Sum Of All Fears is a plot driven political thriller that explores the same old cold war topic between Russia and America with mundane procedure. Not only is the politics shallow but is deliberately simple in order to breed the sensibility amongst all the hoax which latter fails on levels in here. Addition to that, the stakes never communicates which is its primary con since the feature is fueled and relies upon it entirely. The writing is weak and benign with cheesy sequences that are installed to make it glorifying and instead comes off goofy and questionable. It is also disappointing considering the expectations it brought along with such an amazing cast and a success that the franchise had until now, it can be argued to be considered as the weakest link of it. The characters too aren't three dimensional like its predecessors and also lacks the little tactics that were used in physical sequences. The d.o.p. and cinematography is stunning with amazing visuals and beautiful camera work that makes it appetizing somewhat. The background score, sound effects and editing is on short that itches throughout the course of it. Speaking of which, the runtime too, is exhaustingly long with sloppy writing that is not at all gripping. Robinson; the director, needs better polishing on his execution skills since barely a sequence is shot with conviction in here. Affleck has decently handled such an iconic character with an amazing supporting cast like Freeman, Schreiber and Hall. An eerie perspective and stunning visuals are the only high point of this feature. The Sum Of All Fears is accurately titled but unfortunately describes the experience of the audience and the makers since none of the acts in here breathes craft for someone to explore in it.

CIA analyst Jack Ryan must thwart the plans of a terrorist faction that threatens to induce a catastrophic conflict between the United States and Russia's newly elected president by detonating a nuclear weapon at a football game in Baltimore. If there's a reason why people hated this film is probably cause of Ben Affleck umm the dude is Batman for god shakes the reason why i loved this film is because it has a lot of great spy stuff some people called it boring others even a propaganda but in the end it's still a great film that even tho is slow as hell it's pretty good when it comes to spy people or killing them in cool ways. Sum of all Fears won't be remembered in the next 20 minutes because there isn't something classic in it but in the end it's still a pretty cool film.

Based on the 1991 novel of the same name by Tom Clancy, this is an extremely effective and compelling thriller. Since it has received some fairly mediocre reviews, my hopes were not particularly high but it turned out to be hugely enjoyable. In all honesty, I would have preferred a third Harrison Ford film rather than a reboot but it is at least a slick and well made one. Although it was filmed before 9/11, it is notable as being the first major Hollywood film on the subject of terrorism to be released after it. It has a very clever script by Paul Attanasio and Daniel Pyne. Phil Alden Robinson's direction is very good, which surprised since he is not exactly known as an action director.The film has been criticised by many people as being very difficult to follow but I can't really see why. It is admittedly complex and you have to pay attention in order to understand everything but I'd take that over a film where I can mess around on my phone for most of it and still understand it perfectly any day of the week. It opens with an Israeli plane being shot down over the Golan Heights during the Yom Kippur War in October 1973 and the consequent loss of one of its nuclear weapons. In September 2002, the bomb is discovered by scrap metal merchants and sold to an arms dealer for a pittance. He then sells it to an Austrian neo-Nazi named Richard Dressler, who intends to use it to start a nuclear war between the US and Russia which will leave Europe as a fascist superstate under his control. To that end, the bomb is detonated at a sports stadium in Baltimore in the hope of placing the blame squarely on Russia. At one point, Dressler says that Hitler's biggest mistake was going to war with both the US and Russia instead of setting them against each other and it is hard to disagree with that. Of course, if a plot like Dressler's were ever enacted successfully, Europe would undoubtedly be devastated as well but never mind that!The film stars Ben Affleck as the third actor to play Jack Ryan. He does not have the same easy charm as Alec Baldwin and particularly Harrison Ford but he is nevertheless convincing in the role. Affleck will never be Laurence Olivier but he is a likable actor with a good screen presence. In this film, Ryan is younger than in the three previous ones and has only been working at the CIA for 14 months. He moves up in the world when his prediction that Alexander Nemerov would succeed the hard-drinking Boris Yeltsin-esque Russian President Zorkin proves to be correct after the latter's death. Having written a paper on Nemerov, he is an expert on the new President and correctly believes that he is not a militant hardliner but merely adopts that role in order to save face. After the bomb explodes in Baltimore, Ryan desperately tries to contact US President J. Robert Fowler to prevent him from launching a nuclear attack on the Russian Federation before he eventually contacts Nemerov personally. Ryan's one man mission to escape the partially irradiated Baltimore and stop World War III may be a little far-fetched but it operates on film logic as opposed to real world logic.The always excellent Morgan Freeman is perfectly cast as CIA Director William Cabot, who becomes a friend and mentor to Ryan as the film progresses. Ciarán Hinds is fantastic in the role of the moderate Nemerov, basically a post-Communist Gorbachev. As his name would suggest, Hinds is not of Russian descent but he had to learn pages of Russian dialogue for the film, which could not have been easy. However, he delivers every line in a very natural, believable manner. James Cromwell is very good as President Fowler, a good and decent man who has no desire to start a war but believes that he must in order not to look weak in the eyes of America's enemies. The extremely heated discussions between Fowler and his senior staff are very compelling and I imagine that such conversations would be conducted in the same manner in reality. One of the reasons that these scenes are so effective is that actors of the calibre of Philip Baker Hall, Ron Rifkin and Bruce McGill were cast as the key members of his staff. In one of his final films before his death in 2003, Alan Bates is suitably creepy as Dressler, who was possibly named after Anton Drexler (the founder of what eventually became the Nazi Party). Bridget Moynahan is perfectly fine as Cathy Muller but she has no chemistry with Affleck and her scenes are too brief for her to make much of an impression. Of the five "Jack Ryan" films, "Patriot Games" is the only one that really gave Cathy a chance to shine. Other than the actors that I have already mentioned, I was very impressed by Michael Byrne (who also appeared in the similar but less effective Bond film "Tomorrow Never Dies"), Colm Feore (who later popped up as a different character in the franchise's second reboot "Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit") and Ken Jenkins. However, Liev Schrieber, who is not a very good actor, was pretty boring as John Clark, particularly compared to Willem Dafoe's interpretation of the character in "Clear and Present Danger".Overall, this is a very exciting thriller that it is far better than it is made out to be. Another "Jack Ryan" film starring Affleck would have been welcome. I have greatly enjoyed this series, the closest thing to an American version of the Bond films that I have come across.

Well, if we start with the good. The story itself is not really too bad and if you forget the title, the mention of Tom Clancy and Jack Ryan, then the movie is decent enough. It is a reasonably well implemented thriller. Not great but worth seeing.However, the book is about Arab terrorists performing terrorist acts by means of thermonuclear devices causing the two superpowers to come to the brink of a nuclear war. The movie has replaced this foe with some nonsense story about emerging neo-Nazis wanting to take over the world. This is just utter rubbish. It is obviously a political decision by some asshole not wanting to upset the Arab community so he picks a "safe" bad guy instead. The speech where the head Nazi compares themselves with a virus was just unintelligent writing and painful to watch.Nazis are obvious bad guys and can be put to good use in movies, just as communists and Muslim terrorists and a whole bunch of other groups, but not when the original material uses another, much more logical, foe. The original foes in the book would have some force behind them in the radical Muslim community that made their plans for world takeover after the superpowers had annihilated each other at least somewhat plausible. If you ignore minor details like that there would really not be much to take over after a barrage of nuclear missiles from USA and Russian of course. But a few twisted old Nazis that sits in hiding in dark rooms cooking together this hair-brained scheme? No way! I am sad to say that whoever asshole that decided to rewrite the main adversary of this movie ruined it totally for me. I am really happy that I never watched it when it came out in the theaters but instead watched it, in a sense "for free", on my Netflix subscription.