June 5, 2002 – There are three different planes for approaching "The Sum of All Fears" in terms of film criticism: the action, the main actor and the adaptation from the book.
The first, and by far the easiest, is as an edge-of-your-seat thriller about international terrorists who propose to set off a nuclear bomb at the Superbowl. "Black Sunday" meets "Independence Day" with a little "Dr. Strangelove" to madden the mix. One guy who's convinced it's not the Russians at work is young CIA agent Jack Ryan, who has written a paper, see, about the new, enigmatic Russian president, and ends up being the one everybody relies on to save the day and the world.
Other memorable characters include Morgan Freeman as Ryan's CIA boss and Liev Schreiber as the enigmatic infiltrator known as John Clark.
If you've not read the Tom Clancy book on which "The Sum of All Fears" is based, or never read a Tom Clancy book at all, this will work for you. You like high-tech, high-tension contests between the good guys and the bad guys with the fate of the world as we know it at stake, this one's for you. And the box office take last weekend following the May 31 release nationwide shows you're in good company. It was No. 1, outpacing "Star Wars, Episode II" and "Spider-Man."
But even if you haven't read the Clancy books, you may have seen the previous Clancy book movies — "The Hunt for Red October," "Patriot Games" and "Clear and Present Danger." The recurring good guy in all of these and "The Sum of All Fears" is CIA operative and later executive Jack Ryan. And for a lot of folks, Jack Ryan is Harrison Ford, and vice versa. Mind you, Alec Baldwin played Ryan in "Red October," but Ford's personna took over the character from there on. When you read a Jack Ryan book, it's Ford you see in your mind's eye — and, as often as not, on the cover of the paperback.
The show biz press gives varying accounts of who wanted Ford out in favor of a younger hunk for "The Sum of All Fears" — Clancy, Ford or the money moguls behind the movie. But in casting Ben Affleck in the role, they've quantum-leaped from a fit 50-something guy playing a 40-something guy to a 29-year-old guy playing, well, maybe a 30-year-old guy. So, they had to rewrite the Ryan character. In the book, he was by then the director of the CIA, married to a renowned neurosurgeon; for the film, he's back to being a junior agent and a single one at that.
So, either you buy the new Jack Ryan — or even want to check him out — or you don't. Faithful 007 fans have stuck by James Bond through endless reinventions. But New Coke, nah; it bombed.
There's more to the revisionist scripting of "The Sum of All Fears." According to the "Upcomingmovies" web site, they also rewrote the bad guys, in what was maybe a misguided move. Clancy's book, which came out in 1991, made them Middle-Eastern Muslims who got their nuclear bomb from Israel.
But by a couple of years ago, when the movie was in pre-production, Arab bashing in America had gotten to be politically incorrect. (Filming would start in February 2001 and wrap up last June, when 9-11 was just a gleam in genuine Muslim terrorists' eyes.) So, the scriptwriters recast them as European neo-Nazis who want to place the blame for the boom on the Russians and rekindle the Cold War.
What it comes down to is that the movie isn't the book any more. For Clancy the film consultant, artistic integrity clearly wasn't an issue that it might have been for Clancy the author.
And, as numerous reviewers of "The Sum of All Fears" who have also read the Clancy books have noted, it's ironic that the film in production a year ago was not the next one in the Jack Ryan series, "Debt of Honor." That one ends with Ryan taking the oath of office as a fill-in vice president at a joint session of Congress seconds before a modern-day Japanese kamikaze crashes a fully-fueled 747 into the Capitol, blowing most of America's leadership (although not our guy) to smithereens. On the other hand, if they had filmed that one, it would probably still be in the can, awaiting a less-sensitive time for release.
The movie is rated PG-13 for violence, disaster images, and brief strong language. It's playing at Market Square East.
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