I can’t prove it. I don’t know exactly what it was, but I could swear that while I was watching this film there was a goose, or it could have been a duck, trying to sell me some kind of supplemental insurance. It might have been my enemy the backyard limpkin who finds it necessary to scream 24/7 while he litters my yard with huge snail shells. Whatever it was, it was distracting. Sum Of All Fears suffers from a multitude of sins, not the least of which is Ben Affleck.

What I think surprises me the most is that while Tom Clancy himself had far more input than in the previous films, this one appears to stray the most from his original novel. The film begins with us learning that in 1973 an Israeli bomber was attacked and grounded in the remote desert. Now, 30 years later, a group of salvagers discover the nuclear warhead the bomber was carrying. These ignorant nomads collect the bomb because “someone is always willing to pay for this junk”. Meanwhile we are introduced to some political intrigue with our old Clancy friends, the Russians. The Russian President collapses of a heart attack, and a new regime moves in. Nemerov (Hinds) doesn’t exactly have his hands too firmly on the reins of power, and a neo Nazi, Olsen (Feore) wants nothing more than to stir up trouble between the US and Russia. He hopes that the ensuing war will leave the world ready for his fascist regime to step in and fill the void. He’s another Hitler wannabe, except that he’s got that pesky little bomb that got lost in 1973. Tensions between the nations escalate, brought about by ambitious hardliners in the Russian government and some gentle pushing by Oren. As the tensions escalate, Jack Ryan, a CIA newbie who wrote a detailed paper on Nemerov years ago, is called in to help the President’s team understand his motives. Nemerov appears to be a hardliner with aggressive intent; Ryan is the only one who understands he’s not, but that he can’t afford to appear weak and not in control of his military. When a nuclear explosion rocks a football game nearly killing the President, Ryan must piece together the puzzle before both The United States and Russia exchange nuclear strikes.

It was the hope here that the Jack Ryan’s world needed to be reinvented. Casting Affleck was the result of an attempt to make this franchise younger and more hip. The film is essentially a reboot that completely disregards anything that came before. While this film is being released together with the others, it has no place among the other three. In fact, those stories simply couldn’t exist in the new mythology. As if all of that isn’t bad enough, the film suffers from a needlessly complicated plot. There are too many players to comfortably keep track of who is doing what. In spite of some strong performances, the script is too convoluted and the pace jumps from snail speed to frantic too often to get any kind of a flow going. There are some good performances. Ciaran Hinds is the standout playing the new Russian President. He was Caesar in the HBO series Rome for that first season, which only proved his performance here was no fluke. He’s able to rise above a muddled story and deliver a very compelling character. James Cromwell is almost as good playing his counterpart, the American President. Morgan Freeman is also another bright spot in the cast, playing the man who brings Ryan into the inner circle. Unfortunately Affleck is not even marginal as Ryan. He tries too hard to appear green and yet competent. There’s too much time spent courting his future wife, which only serves to drag down a story that already has plenty of pacing troubles. The film also suffers from a bit of anticlimactic fatigue by the nuclear explosion itself. This is the kind of thing that needed to happen either right away, creating the real story of two nations carried to the brink of disaster, or at the end of an entirely different kind of a film. In the end, Tom Clancy should have had more confidence in the source material, and Paramount should have had more confidence in their very first attempt in this franchise.

Video

The Sum Of All Fears is presented in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1. This is the best looking of the three films I’ve seen in the series so far in Hi-def. The AVC MPEG-4 codec creates a very sweet looking 1080p presentation. Detail is simply incredible in this film. There are some incredible images in this movie. The Kremlin locations are absolutely gorgeous to look at. Colors are about as natural and reference as they get. There isn’t a lot of filter or color correction here, so everything looks pretty realistic. The explosion leaps from the screen as the shock wave does its damage. Black levels are as deep as I’ve seen. I couldn’t find any significant print damage or compression artifact. You can’t get picture clarity much better than this.

Audio

The DTS HD 5.1 Master Lossless Audio track is again the best of the Jack Ryan films on Blu. The score is not as dynamic here, but that’s more owing to the nature of the source material. Ambients are generous and do a pretty good job of pulling you into the action. The problem that appears to be true of all of the Ryan films does persist here. I just can’t get much out of my sub on this film. How can you blow up a football stadium and throw a shock wave for a half mile radius, taking out planes, buses, and limos, and not get a huge rush out of the sub range. I don’t know how you do it, but someone at Paramount has figured out a way. Dialog is fine, and everything is appropriately placed. The highs are particularly sweet and clean.

There are two Audio Commentary Tracks to be found here. The first track features Tom Clancy and director Phil Alden Robinson. Clancy spends most of the film criticizing the choices that were made. He was an executive producer on this film and given more input than before, but he sure sounds like he’s trying to pass the buck now.

The second track features Robinson with cinematographer John Lindley. This is one of those shot by shot analytical tracks that is strictly for the film school crowd.

Special Features

• The Making Of The Sum Of All Fears: This half hour feature deals with Ford’s reluctance to continue in the role and how it sparked the whole reboot idea. It’s a good feature, but a bad idea.

• Creating Reality – The Visual Effects Of The Sum Of All Fears: Another half hour feature looks at 5 f/x scenes from the film and allows you to see the evolution of the layers it took to create each effect. Both of these features were released previously and were not redone in HD.

• Trailer: This feature was presented in HD.

Final Thoughts

For now it appears that Jack Ryan’s film career is dead. There are other books, but there doesn’t appear to be any strong interest at this time. Clancy’s not near as hot as he once was, and even in the books Ryan’s become a political animal not near as interesting as he once was. I’m sure we will see the character again some day, but it will most certainly involve a fourth actor in the role. It’s this inconsistency and deviation that killed what I believe could and would have been a strong franchise today. What does the franchise really need? “I don’t know, all right. I don’t know”.