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Director: Phil Alden Robinson
Release Date: May 31st, 2002
Rating: PG-13 (for violence, disaster images and brief strong language)
See it on Amazon
 The sum of all our fears were met, when my wife and I realized that we paid money to see this movie.
The hype was much more exciting
There was plenty of controversy leading up to the release of The Sum of All Fears. The Drudge Report posted a story with an unnamed "senior Bush official" questioning Hollywood's release of the movie. "After what we've all been through the past year, how can Hollywood so casually roll out a movie which shows Marines pulling a bleeding president from his motorcade?" An unnamed top studio source responded by saying Hollywood feels America is on its way towards healing. Mainstream media agencies such as CNN quickly copied the story building up a lot of anticipation around the movie's release.
Whether or not the senior Bush official really questioned the release is irrelevant. The Sum of All Fears was going to be an instant hit. How could it miss? It's another movie based of a novel by Tom Clancy, the man who proves how dangerous a library card can be. The story is about a group terrorists attempting to blow up a nuke at the Super Bowl. Their goal is to rekindle the Cold War by causing mass confusion between America and Russia.
Any movie that deals with terrorist attacks within America is going to do well. It's no longer just an interesting story; it's a sobering reality.
No bang for our buck
A nuclear device is set off at the Super Bowl, but you barely see any of it. There's a flashing light, a car rolling over, a helicopter crashing, but the city isn't destroyed. There's a cloud of smoke and the aftermath of confusion, but the movie makers left out the destruction of the city. If you're going to blow up a major American city in a movie, you should at least show it.
Now you're probably thinking that I'm a sick person wanting to see death and destruction, but the lack of this scene caused a yawn of boredom in an action movie that barely had any action to begin with.
Interesting notes
In the movie, the terrorists are European neo-Nazis, but in the book, the terrorist are Muslim extremists. When the film was originally being made (prior to September 11th), there was a move away from portraying Muslims as stock terrorist villains, partly because of consistent (and understandable) protests by Arab-American groups. This causes the movie to be a sort of a time capsule of our former innocence. (Source: Upcomingmovies.com)
A nice attention to detail is James Cromwell plays the U.S. president in The Sum of All Fears. Cromwell also played the president in Clear and Present Danger. Too bad they couldn't get Harrison Ford to play Jack Ryan again. For whatever reason, Ford didn't come back and Paramount Pictures settled on Ben Affleck who is much younger than Harrison Ford (I wonder if they thought we wouldn't notice).
Although it was a great plot that hits close to home, that's all it was. The movie cost $70 Million and I'm still not sure where all the money went.
Related Links:
The Sum of All Fears Official Site
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