The Sum of a solid movie

They say you should never see a movie before you read the book, because the book is always better. With all the book-to-movie adaptations this year, the rule has to have an exception somewhere, right? Well, The Sum of All Fears is not the exception... but it's close.

Tom Clancy's books are practically in a genre of their own, making it all the more difficult for someone to understand The Sum of All Fears (the movie, that is) with no prior knowledge. CIA analyst Jack Ryan (Ben Affleck), a familiar name to Clancy devotees, is once again the only man with the ability to stop a worldwide catastrophe.

The movie opens by adding a little twist to some real history. The Israelis supposedly launch a fighter plane with a nuclear bomb on board during the 1973 war with Egypt and Syria as a "just in case" plan so they can have the final word should Egyptian and Syrian forces overcome the army. The plane is shot down and the bomb is forgotten until, conveniently for the plot, neo-Nazi terrorists led by Richard Dressler (Alan Bates) get a hold of it.

The terrorists plan to make Russia and the United States cripple each other by using the nuke to frame the Russians for an attack on Baltimore, and thus provoke a major war. Meanwhile, the Russian president has died, and the Americans are worried about his successor, Nemerov (Ciaran Hinds), who appears to be a hard-liner (and like many other characters, never bothers to disclose his first name). Jack Ryan and CIA director William Cabot (Morgan Freeman) go to Russia to find out more about the new president and the status of nuclear disarmament. While there, they discover that three of the country's top nuclear scientists have vanished, and it's from that point that Ryan's job starts. Not the most unique plot, but the movie does an admirable job of keeping it fresh. Hinds is arguably the best actor in the movie, Freeman does the excellent job we expect of him, and Affleck is, well, Affleck.

Eventually, Ryan does figure out what's going on around him, but it's too late for him to do anything but get hit by the shockwave of the nuclear explosion that destroys the city of Baltimore. At that point, several supporting characters that were mostly hidden for the first half of the movie get their chances to shine.

And they do shine. President Fowler (James Cromwell), Secretary of State Owens (Ron Rifkin), Secretary of Defense Becker (Philip Baker Hall) and National Security Advisor Revel (Bruce McGill) perform very believably, which is all we can ask of them, considering their places in the movie, in the aftermath of the nuclear bombing.

Sound like a lot of complex plotlines? It is. The movie is engaging and realistic for the most part, but it lacks the edge-of-your-seat aspect and the hard-to-understand plot can get boring. In addition, the film's writers, Paul Attanasio and Daniel Pyne, felt the need to mention Ryan's girlfriend, Dr. Cathy Muller (Bridget Moynahan), which seemed like an afterthought to an otherwise good movie.

In the end, though, the movie's faults are minor and few. The Sum of All Fears is an excellent movie overall, definitely worthy of the Clancy name and books. Director Phil Alden Robinson and the writers did a great job making the movie seem like something that could really happen and giving an action/thriller a smart side.

The Sum of All Fears, Paramount pictures, 2 hr. 4 min., is rated PG-13 and is playing in all theatres. Official site: http://www.sumofallfearsmovie.com