At a quick glance - and judging from the mediocre 70% overall rating on here - this movie was not well received. However, I found it very enjoyable, even though a bit dated. (Of course, at my age, I'm getting to where I prefer the "dated" movies as all the current stuff is mostly just tripe and rehashed vomitous.) Maybe I'm getting jaded by watching so many movies in the Horror genre here of late, and something that is completely different seems to bring a breath of fresh air. There were, yes, a few scenes that were eye-rollable but for the most part, it was an enjoyable, suspenseful, cat-and-mouse political thriller. I've only read a handful of the Tom Clancy novels (and it's been awhile) so I'm not one of those "It didn't mirror the novel word-for-word so it blows!" types. While I almost always prefer a movie that sticks close to the original story, I'm also wise enough to know you can't take a novel the length or breadth of one of Clancy's (or Stephen King's) and expect to compact it into a 120-minutes-or-less screen adaptation. With that said, maybe I'm a bit more forgiving than those who are so heavily criticizing this film but I still found it enjoyable and gripping enough to grab and KEEP my attention throughout. Would I watch it again? Absolutely. In spite of what everyone else is ranting about on here, this was a good film, definitely worth watching.
The only way to watch The Sum of All Fears is to put on the commentary track and laugh at Tom Clancy poking fun at the director for fudging up so much...
It's the same story with this one as it was with the Harrison Ford ones...if it wasn't “based” on a book, that many of the target audience know I might add, it would probably have worked quite well for me. Knowing the book...this is just not how it's supposed to be.
...and who the hell picked some lame ass neo-Nazis as the main villains?!? Talk about weak sauce...
This is a Great movie, spellbinding and Stressful.
There's nothing like watching people reading from screens as a riveting suspenseful ending to a film (please see sarcasm). Alec Baldwin continues to be the best Jack Ryan. I never bought into the idea that Liev Schreiber as John Clark.
They really messed up the Ryan movie franchise with this one.
I think this also is the movie that made me dislike Affleck. But that´s not the reason for the mess up. By choosing Affleck to play Ryan and since he´s obviously much younger than Harison Ford, they needed to place the story before the previous movies. So they do what Hollywood likes to do alot: a reboot. They just picked out one of Clancys books for this (interestingly the one after "Clear and Present Danger") not caring for anything else but to cash in, which because of the laurels of the previous ones they did. And they changed so many things from the book it´s hardly recognizable.
Here we see a young Ryan who isn´t married yet and, of course, has no children. That produces continuity errors within the movies which is why I hate reboots. That is the main reason the story didn´t work in this movie for me.
But the movie itself was bad. It jumps through the plot like a kangaroo and it is incoherent. Although the cast reads good on paper the performances are all but forgettable.
And some notes about the summary of the movie here:
- 27,000 nuclear weapons. One is missing: wrong, it was a bomb from the Yom-Kipur-War and even in the movie no one missed it after the plane was shot down at the beginning.
- Jack Ryan discovers that an Islamic terrorist group is constructing a nuclear warhead: wrong again. It´s was a facist group led by an Austrian Neo-Nazi.
A nearly perfect thriller with one huge downside and absurdity in the form of an absolutely unbelievable part of the plot: a no-body in the form of a lowly CIA analyst cannot only convince a high-ranking US military person to let him communicate with the Russian president (during the midst of the beginning of a nuclear war between the USA and Russia nota bene (!)) , no, he can even convince the president to abort further nuclear attacks on the USA. Absolutely rubbish and I will never understand what director Phil Robinson and his colleagues where think when coming up with this particular aspect of the plot!
The problem with this film in the 2020s is that the book it's loosely based on was already out-of-date when it was made. The Jack Ryan novels have not aged well; briefly put, the world-view projected is post Cold War & 'the USA (& particularly the CIA) has won, because the USSR has collapsed'. Not quite how it was turning out, even in the early 2000s.
Then there are the many plot-holes, most visible in the scenes that take place in Baltimore; mobile signal post EMP, anyone?
Some good some bad here. Improvements over the prior movies is that Harrison Ford is no longer Jack Ryan. He was at LEAST 15 years too old to be playing the part. Affleck was an improvement. Live Schreiber was so much better as John Clark than Willem DeFoe. 1000X. If you read the books you already know that.
Some of the changes they make from the book do not make sense. Leaving out entire plot lines. I think Clancy just sold them a list of character names and said a nuke weapon got lost a long time ago and now it came home to blow up a football game.
VESA win, supporting visual effects
"You dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. You dropped the bomb on Nagasaki. Do not lecture me on Chechnya!"
The introduction and build up is so good that I was blown away that I hadn't seen this yet, but then the 2nd half feels a little campy at times. I think Ben Affleck did a great job as Jack Ryan and they took chances with a few things, I just didn't enjoy it as much by the end of it.
The Jack Ryan series gets rebooted in the action-packed thriller The Sum of All Fears as Ben Affleck steps into the role. In this installment a young CIA analyst named Jack Ryan must discover the origin of a rogue nuclear attack before the United States and Russia go to war. Unfortunately the story is weakened by post 9/11 politics, but the spirit of Tom Clancy’s novel remains intact. The casting is quite strong, and includes Ben Affleck, Morgan Freeman, Bridget Moynahan, Liev Schreiber and James Cromwell. The directing is also pretty good, and is able to enhance the intensity and suspense of the film. Additionally, Jerry Goldsmith’s score is exceptional and does an impressive job at creating a tense atmosphere. The Sum of All Fears has some script issues, but it delivers the thrills and adventure that has come to be expected from the series.
We traded Harrison Ford for a young Ben Affleck with the face of always lost. It is still exciting to see the mistrust between the blocks, while the fight against the clock is being fought to avoid disaster
Ben Affleck is no Harrison Ford. The action is lame and the plot is stupid.
Shout by ShubesBlockedParent2022-02-04T00:20:04Z
Far-fetched? Absolutely. Great story. Absolutely. Worth watching? Absolutely. Worth watching AGAIN? You guessed it: ABSOLUTELY. Loved this one. I don't understand why the hatred, but I thought this was a great movie. Yes, there were plot holes big enough to drive a truck through, but guess what? IT'S A HOLLYWOOD-PRODUCED WORK OF FICTION! Sit back and forget everything and watch the flippin' movie already. If you're looking for "true-to-life", let me suggest one of the many documentaries available on Netflix. Or perhaps you would enjoy the History channel. Maybe one of the "reality" shows...yeah, one of those where the average joe manages to find a soft spot in some multi-gazillionaire car collector/hobbyist's heart and gets presented with a fully-restored 1963 Cadillac because "We share your pain in the loss of your father, so here's a nice shiny car worth about $350,000 because we're just really nice people". Oh, absolutely that's soooooooooooooooooooo much more true-to-life than this movie. Quit hating on the movie and stick to your fake reality TV, losers. This is a good movie, bottom line. Deal with it.