I haven’t been to the movies in a couple of weeks and I’d avoided this movie based on the terrible reviews in the newspapers. But there wasn’t anything else playing at the Dollar Movie night over in Milpitas (or Tiny Penis as the less than reverant locals like to say) that could be agreed upon. So we saw Sum of All Fears, the Ben Affleck re-imagining of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan character.
Ryan’s books are huge bestsellers and yet the series hasn’t done so well on the big screen. Alec Baldwin didn’t work out and Harrison Ford was just too old when he made his first appearance–sometimes the Hollywood studios get caught up far to much in star power. So Clancy and fellow producer Mace Neufeld decided that, with so many more Ryan novels yet to be filmed, they needed a fresh start with a younger actor and got the 30 year old Affleck, who will be thrilled to have the $15-20 million dollar paychecks these films are sure to bring him. The creative types also needed to revise the Ryan character, who is in his late 30s and at a more advanced stage in his CIA career in the novel, and so they made him just one of the analysts in the CIA’s Russia section. John Clark (played by Liev Schreiber in place of Clear and Present Danger’s Willem Dafoe) is another major character in the Ryan world and the script has him younger than the novel, though just as weary of fieldwork and just as efficient and deadly. They also changed the villains from Muslim terrorists to neo-Nazis although this was a pre-9/11 decision, but that was probably a wise choice.
Overall, I have to disagree with the critics. There were parts of the plot that got compressed too much and not everything made enough sense–girlfriend Dr. Muller is standing in front of big glass windows as the bomb goes off, the glass is blown in towards her and the pressure wave throws her 10 feet or so, but she is essentially unharmed and doesn’t get enough radiation exposure to do any damage. John Clark is almost as good at slipping in and out of personas as Jarrod from The Pretender but with a better travel budget and superior tools. The film moves so fast that it doesn’t always take the time to make sure we know who a particular character is.
But Affleck was strong as Ryan, Morgan Freeman puts just the right amount of wry in his delivery, Alan Bates delivers the leader of the neo-Nazis as someone who really believes in his own psychotic vision, and the remainder of the cast does well, especially the US Cabinet members and Michael Byrne as Russian spymaster Anatoli Grushkov. Phil Alden Robinson keeps his finger on the action button, with minimal stops at the exposition station, and the way he handled the big explosion was difficult to watch because of how real it seemed.
Recommended
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