The Sum of All Fears (film)

Infobox Film
name = The Sum of All Fears


caption = Theatrical poster for "The Sum of All Fears".
director = Phil Alden Robinson
producer = Mace Neufeld
writer = Tom Clancy (novel)
Paul Attanasio, Daniel Pyne (screenplay)
starring = Ben Affleck
Morgan Freeman
James Cromwell
Ciarán Hinds
Liev Schreiber
Bridget Moynahan
Michael Byrne
music = Jerry Goldsmith
cinematography = John Lindley
editing = Nicholas de Toth
Neil Travis
distributor = Paramount Pictures
released = May 31, 2002
runtime = 124 minutes
country = GER
USA
language = English
budget = US$68 million
preceded_by = "Clear and Present Danger"
followed_by = "Without Remorse"
website = http://www.sumofallfearsmovie.com/
amg_id = 1:261810
imdb_id = 0164184

"The Sum of All Fears" is a 2002 American action film directed by Phil Alden Robinson and based on a book of the same name by Tom Clancy. It stars Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan and Morgan Freeman and was released by Paramount Pictures in the United States on May 31, 2002.

Plot

The film begins with a sequence inspired from the novel's prologue set during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in which a single Israeli A-4 jet carrying a nuclear weapon is shot down over the Syrian desert. The bomb, over time, is consumed by the sand and disappears.

The film narrative then shifts forward 29 years and inside a secret government bunker in Mount Weather, Virginia, where President J. Robert Fowler (James Cromwell) and some of his senior national security advisors, including Central Intelligence Agency Director William Cabot (Morgan Freeman), are conducting a top-secret wargame, simulating a Russian nuclear attack against the United States.

In 2002, the bomb is found in Syria by a couple of Arab scrap dealers and unwittingly sold to an arms dealer named Olson (Colm Feore), who in turn sells it to an Austrian neo-Nazi named Richard Dressler (Alan Bates) for 50 million dollars on the black market.

Meanwhile, the United States becomes concerned when Alexander Nemerov (Ciaran Hinds) becomes the new president of the Russian Federation. Nemerov is seen as a hard-liner with regards to his control over the Russian military. The Director of Central Intelligence seeks the opinion of young CIA analyst Jack Ryan (Ben Affleck), who has done extensive research on Nemerov's life and career. While on a routine inspection of Russia's nuclear weapons facilities, Cabot and Ryan are invited to the Kremlin to meet with Nemerov personally. Tension arises when Nemerov likens the United States' involvement in Russian-Chechen affairs to "sleeping with another man's wife", with Russia playing the part of the betrayed and vengeful husband.

During the inspection, Ryan notices that three senior Russian nuclear technicians are not present at the facility. Nemerov's aide Anatoli Grushkov (Michael Byrne) attempts to assuage Ryan's concerns by telling him that the three scientists are out sick, on vacation, and recently deceased, respectively. Cabot's covert informant in Moscow, known by his codename 'Spinnaker', tells Cabot that Grushkov's explanations are false, and that the whereabouts of the three scientists are truly unknown to the Russian government. Upon arrival in Washington, Cabot sends CIA operative John Clark (Liev Schreiber) to track down the missing scientists. Clark discovers the three scientists in Ukraine constructing Dressler's bomb.

When President Nemerov takes responsibility for an unauthorized gas-warfare attack on Grozny, the capital city of Chechnya, President Fowler and his administration become concerned with the volatility of Nemerov's military policies and respond by sending NATO peacekeeping troops to Chechnya. Meanwhile, the nuclear bomb arrives in a crate in Baltimore, Maryland, and is placed at an American football stadium disguised as a cigarette vending machine. In a recording, Dressler reveals his intentions in placing the bomb in Baltimore: frustrated and angered with the American and Russian paternalism over smaller European nations, Dressler has resolved to destroy both nations, much as Adolf Hitler desired to in World War II. Dressler notes that Hitler was "not crazy", but "stupid" in that he tried to fight the Soviet Union and the United States simultaneously. Rather, one must get "America and Russia to fight each other... and destroy each other." By detonating a Russian-made nuclear weapon on American soil, Dressler hopes to aggravate an already tense relationship between the two superpowers to the point of full-blown nuclear war.

Ryan attempts to inform Cabot that the bomb is in Baltimore, but it turns out that President Fowler and Cabot are attending a football game in the stadium where the bomb is planted. The noise from the game make it excessively difficult for Cabot to hear Ryan's warning. After several tries, Ryan gets the warning across and Cabot orders the Secret Service agents to rush the President out of the stadium. The President manages to escape the stadium, but only moments before the bomb detonates, destroying a significant part of the city. After the explosion, President Fowler is rescued by United States Marines, and taken airborne on a Boeing E-4B Advanced Airborne Command Post with his cabinet. Immediately, they fear that the bomb was Russian. Ryan and his girlfriend Dr. Catherine Muller (Bridget Moynahan) survive the blast, but Cabot dies later at a hospital.

After learning about the explosion, Dressler calls his neo-fascist friend, General Dubinin (Yevgeni Lazarev), a general in the Russian Air Force. In an attempt to further aggravate the situation, the general orders his Tu-22M Backfire pilots to strike an American aircraft carrier USS "John C. Stennis" in the North Sea under the false information that a United States ICBM has attacked Moscow. The strike heavily damages the "Stennis" and renders the carrier unable to launch aircraft. In response, American President Fowler orders three United States Air Force F-16 fighter jets to attack the originating Russian air base. Tensions mount as trust between Fowler and Nemerov rapidly deteriorates. To prove that he is willing to take the exchange to the next level, Fowler orders SNAPCOUNT, the military to maximum readiness, preparing to launch a massive nuclear strike on Russian military targets. Seeing that the U.S. has dispatched B-2 Spirit stealth bombers and nuclear submarines, Nemerov prepares to launch his ICBMs on the United States.

Ryan first discovers from the Air Force Radiation Assessment Team that the plutonium for the Baltimore bomb was manufactured in Savannah River nuclear plant in South Carolina in 1968, thus indicating that the original device was of American, not Russian, origin. He tries, unsuccessfully, to communicate this information to President Fowler. Ryan further discovers that Dressler was behind the Baltimore attack. After being with the dying William Cabot, Ryan takes Cabot's personal effects, and with Cabot's text messenger, asks Spinnaker how the American plutonium ended up in a Russian bomb. Spinnaker tells him that the United States had secretly managed to send it to Israel for their nuclear weapons program.

Ryan gets to the Baltimore harbor docks, only to find Dressler's American contact Lod Mason murdered by Dressler's South African assassin. The assassin attacks Ryan, who manages to get the upper hand on his attacker. Ryan tries to force the assassin to talk, but is thwarted as the Maryland State Police arrive. Via a Maryland State Police helicopter, Ryan manages to get to The Pentagon, where he is able to communicate the truth to President Nemerov. Relying on Ryan's word, Nemerov proposes a plan to Fowler to a stand down. Fowler follows suit, and nuclear war is averted.

The two presidents meet and make peace as agents of both governments hunt down and assassinate the terrorist conspirators. John Clark slits Olson's throat, Russian agents pursue and shoot the traitorous General Dubinin in a snow-covered forest, and as Grushkov looks on, a carefully-placed car bomb does not kill Dressler's bodyguard when he starts the car, but kills Dressler after he replaces his bodyguard at the wheel, closes the door, and pushes his cigarette lighter, which triggers his car to explode. [In terrorist circles, drivers began to be required to start the car engine. As a response to car bombs; assassins have had to adapt to avoid needless killings.] [Gayle Rivers, The War Against the Terrorists: How to Win It, 1986 (hardcover), Stein and Day Publishers, New York City, page 207]

The final scene takes place in Washington, D.C., where Presidents Fowler and Nemerov address the Baltimore tragedy and the future of Weapons of Mass Destruction during a speech on the White House lawn. In a nearby park, Ryan and Cathy Mueller are having a picnic when they are approached by Grushkov. It is revealed that Grushkov is Spinnaker: Cabot's covert source in Moscow. Grushkov gives Dr. Muller a "modest gift" for her engagement to Ryan. Muller and Ryan are perplexed, as they have not told anyone of their engagement. Ryan asks Grushkov how he could possibly know this secret, but he simply smiles, shrugs and walks away.

Main cast

* Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan
* Morgan Freeman as DCI William Cabot
* Bridget Moynahan as Dr. Catherine Muller
* James Cromwell as President J. Robert Fowler
* Liev Schreiber as John Clark
* Michael Byrne as Anatoli Grushkov
* Colm Feore as Olson
* Alan Bates as Richard Dressler
* Ron Rifkin as Secy. State Sidney Owens
* Ciarán Hinds as President Nemerov
* Bruce McGill as NSA Gene Revell
* Richard Marner as President Zorkin
* Philip Baker Hall as Secy. Defence David Becker
* Ken Jenkins as Admiral Pollack
* John Beasley as General Lasseter

Deviations from the book

While the basic plot was the same, there were significant changes from the book. Noting these substantial changes, in the commentary track on the DVD release, Tom Clancy jokingly introduces himself as "the author of the book that he [Phil Alden Robinson, who is present with Clancy] ignored".

The original terrorists in the novel were Muslim extremists, but in the movie, they are changed to neo-fascists. A common misconception is that this was done as a reaction to the September 11 attacks. However, the movie was filmed months before 9/11; it finished filming in June 2001. (The 9/11 attacks actually resemble the events at the end of "Debt of Honor" instead, the novel after "The Sum of All Fears.", where the terrorist is not a Muslim extremist but a bitter Japanese pilot who is avenging what he wrongly thinks was the murder of his son during a Japanese-American war).On the "making-of" DVD extra, the director says that this was purely for elements relating to the plot, as Muslim extremists would not be able to plausibly accomplish all that was necessary for the story to work. The group Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) did mount a 2-year lobbying campaign that ended on January 26, 2001, against using "Muslim villains", as the original book version did. Director Phil Alden Robinson is quoted in a letter to CAIR saying "I hope you will be reassured that I have no intention of promoting negative images of Muslims or Arabs, and I wish you the best in your continuing efforts to combat discrimination". [http://www.cair-net.org/default.asp?Page=articleView&id=71&theType=AA] Screenwriter Dan Pyne claims that the decision to not use Arab terrorists was “possibly because that has become a cliché. At the time that I started writing the "Sum Of All Fears", Joerg Haider was just starting to come into play in Austria. And simultaneous with that, I think, there was some neo-nationalist activity in Holland, and there was stuff going on in Spain and in Italy. So it seemed like a logical and lasting idea that would be universal.”cite news|title=Casting Calls|author=producer: Lauren F. Cardillo| publisher=Running Down Dreams Productions & The Discovery Times Channel|date=2003] It has also been noted that a larger percent of profits stems from international audiences, and American filmmakers work to avoid alienating large segments of this customer base.
* The attacked city was changed from Denver to Baltimore. References to the "Super Bowl", "San Diego Chargers", and "Minnesota Vikings" were made generic. The game scenes were filmed at Olympic Stadium in Montreal, with CFL teams Montreal Alouettes and the Toronto Argonauts standing in for the game's participants. Although the game clearly takes place indoors, overhead shots of Baltimore in the film reveal its football stadium as being an outdoor facility. Also, in the book the Secretary of Defense also owns the San Diego Chargers, a detail that is not part of the movie.
* In the novel, President Fowler did not attend the game, relying on the advice of the Secret Service, but his trusted Secretaries of State and Defense do attend and are killed in the nuclear explosion, leaving him without good advice during the ensuing crisis; in the movie, all three men escape the blast area in time to avoid being killed.
*In the novel, Cabot is a political appointee who is seen as inept and largely incapable of heading an agency like the CIA. In the book, Cabot is heading home from a security conference in South Korea during the crisis but provides no help in resolving it since satellite communications were damaged by the nuclear explosion, and he is on an airplane with no direct communication links. In the movie however, Cabot is very skilled at his job, is killed in the attack and deeply missed during the ensuing crisis.
* The "battle for Berlin" is excluded from the script (since the book was based in the late 1980s there is still a Soviet garrison in the city and during the course of the book, there is a clash between Russian and American tanks)- although the Berlin Brigade, which was historically deactivated in 1994, is mentioned at the beginning of the movie. The attack on the USS Stennis by a Russian Air Force officer who is working for Dressler fits into this niche for the movie.
* In the book, Spinnaker (the mole in the Russian government) is actually found to be an unreliable source because he is making up or changing information for his own benefit to become a president of the USSR (or the Russian Federation), and the Russian President swears he will end his career when his role in the events that nearly caused WWIII is revealed. In the movie, Spinnaker provides good information and remains a trusted advisor at the story's end.
* Robby Jackson's role is omitted.
* Dr. Elizabeth Elliot's role is omitted. Indeed, the issue of incompetence/stupidity among U.S. government officials is replaced by panic over the sudden crisis, lack of information and disputes with the equally flummoxed Russians.
* Instead of the U.S. fighters shooting down Libyan MiGs, the USS "John C. Stennis" is attacked by Backfire bombers.
* Since the film is a reboot, some details of Jack Ryan's life are changed. In the film, Jack Ryan is a low-level intelligence analyst, whereas he is the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence in the book. The film also shows Ryan dating Catherine Muller and meeting John Clark for the first time, while in the book he is already married to Muller and they have children; Ryan met Clark in "Clear and Present Danger" (in the film as well as the book).

References

External links

* [http://web.archive.org/web/20030422221041/http://www.sumofallfearsmovie.com/ Official DVD website]