MAY 2022:

Fear Factor..

I first saw The Sum of All Fears when it premiered in theaters on May 31, 2002. I was on a date at the time, I remember being motivated for my dates film choice starring Ben Affleck. He was all the rage in 2002 appearing in two big budget films from April to Memorial Day Weekend that Summer, the earlier film being Changing Lanes with Samuel L. Jackson. This was all in the same year he was being awarded PEOPLE’s Sexiest Man Alive and while dating and then being engaged to Jennifer Lopez for the first time. This no doubt, kept him in every tabloid paper and the phrase “Bennifer” was born. Needless to say, I was glad my date wanted to go see it. It was a big year for Ben Affleck Fans.

THE SUM OF ALL MEMORIES…

At the same time, I remember leaving the theater, thinking it was the realist scenario for what Russia and the United States relations could lead to since we had just experienced September 11. Nothing seemed out of the realm of possibility after that day. And our plan for Russia since the Cold War has always been treading lightly with the nuclear superpower. We watch what we say and do and keep what we’re doing with them on a need to know basis National Security wise. We have danced this razors edge since before the Cold War with Russia, and that geopolitical Tango continues to this day. You couldn’t help but notice the realness in the film topic, if you paid attention to our foreign policy relations in any way.

Always Knowing Reel Fiction From Fact..

Granted when I watched it in 2002, I understood even then, the foreign policy subject matter and could relate it to real world politics of the time, I didn’t quite feel the sense of nuclear warning in 2002 that I felt this time around rewatching it. This time when I watched it, I felt a sense of familiarity with Jack Ryan’s urgency to stop a nuclear war. I could relate to the concern he felt. Lately the news about the war with Russia and Ukraine, has many minds thinking logically about worst case scenario. I knew the books Tom Clancy wrote were as close to real world politics in terms of Russia and United States relations as one could get when writing espionage thrillers based in a world where evasive and lying are part of the job. He made most of it up but left out what was real when he is asked what he writes about. he is rather vague. So you never really know what’s fabricated for film and what actually might have happened that he based something off of. So being that he does such a great job on character and story development, there is plenty for a screenwriter to work with to build a great movie with factual espionage scenarios.

The Sum Of United States Fears..Post 9/11 

I remember leaving after the movie having enjoyed it for the storyline and how I was left with this hint of dread and thought provoking questions about the state of our global affairs. The film came out not long after September 11, 2001, and due to the nature of the storyline of domestic terrorism, some viewers found the film too difficult to watch when the scene occurs in Baltimore, MD. It was too soon and served as a reminder of our own very real experience with a targeted attack on a popular American gathering place a year earlier. But when the years passed and people were able to give the film another look, they realized as a book to film adaption, it’s not that bad. When judged against the the last two actors that played Jack Ryan, Ben Affleck wasn’t bad but he also wasn’t great. While the film took liberties with creating William Cabot’s character for the screen, the events that Cabot takes part in with regards to Jack Ryan, happen in the book with the same outcomes.

You can watch the Baltimore Football Stadium Attack from The Sum of All Fears here:

Review Revisited… 

Roger Ebert reviewed the film for its original premiere release and in his May 31, 2002, review he said:

 

“Oh, for the innocent days when a movie like “The Sum of All Fears” could be enjoyed as a “thriller.” In these dark times, it is not a thriller but a confirmer, confirming our fears that the world is headed for disaster. The film is about the detonation of a nuclear device in an American city. No less an authority than Warren Buffet recently gave a speech in which he flatly stated that such an event was “inevitable.” Movies like “Black Sunday” could exorcise our fears, but this one works instead to give them form.”

– Roger Ebert

Keeping the Back Channels Open for A Hollywood Happy Ending.. 

He goes on to discuss the ending being on a happier note despite the thrilling nature of the nuclear plot in the film. Hollywood has proven time and again with test audiences that films like The Sum of All Fears do better when they end on a positive note, despite the doomsday subject matter. Movie goers don’t like to leave a theater with such a dreadful feeling. Even horror movies have their way of being campy enough to remove the real dread of all the violence and fear taking place on screen. You don’t leave the theater feeling awful on any level. The experience is always meant to be an enjoyable one, that’s what filmmakers remember when writing an ending to movies based so much in a thrilling reality.

Ebert writes about the ending of the film in his 2002 Review by saying:

 

“To be sure, Tom Clancy’s horrifying vision has been footnoted with the obligatory Hollywood happy ending, in which world war is averted and an attractive young couple pledge love while sitting on a blanket in the sunshine on the White House lawn. We can walk out smiling, unless we remember that much of Baltimore is radioactive rubble. Human nature is a wonderful thing. The reason the ending is happy is because we in the audience assume we’ll be the two on the blanket, not the countless who’ve been vaporized.”

– Roger Ebert

You can watch the happy ending for The Sum of All Fears here:

A Jack of All Trades..

Tom Clancy’s Ryanverse is beloved due to his expertise about warfare and national security issues. With this, he writes a realistic believable character. It is a character that has sustained the passing of time in Hollywood to remaining as a popular franchise and lexicon that can be returned to for viewer enjoyment. And due to the character of Jack Ryan being pulled from the geopolitics and national security instances of a very real America, storylines are writing themselves daily for any screenwriter to adapt from. Jack Ryan is an ever evolving character. He really is a writer’s dream. Our real politics are constantly providing material for Jack’s world on the daily.

Roger Ebert even agreed with my critique discussion that the use of neo-Nazi’s is politically correct, but for the wrong reason. He states in his review that it is best to invent a villain who won’t offend any audiences watching the film:

“The use of the neo-Nazis is politically correct: Best to invent villains who won’t offend any audiences. This movie can play in Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iraq without getting walkouts. It’s more likely that if a bomb ever does go off in a big city, the perpetrators will be True Believers whose certainty about the next world gives them, they think, the right to kill us in this one.”

– Roger Ebert

In 2022, America might just have a few villains offended.. 

Ebert’s assessment of the choice of villain in my opinion, was likely due to the World War II Veterans and Holocaust Survivor generation that lived through the war and knew the enemy well and would have never sided with or defended Neo-Nazism. But the geopolitical climate of today has seen a sudden rise in extremist views and it has all but infiltrated its modern ideology into American Politics. The Department of Homeland Security warned as early as October 2020 that the biggest terror threat to America domestically is the rise of White Supremacy and Right-Wing Fanatic Fascism. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas testified to Senators before Congress on May 12, 2021, about the threat of domestic violence here in America. They warned that our biggest threat of domestic terrorism and extremism are ethnically and racially motivated.

Attorney General Garland was quoted by the Senate Appropriations Committee as saying:

 “Specifically, those who advocate for the superiority of the white race.”

– A.G. Merrick Garland

You can read about the Senate Appropriations Committee Hearing Findings in the New York Times article below:

 

You can read The Department of Homeland Security Threat Assessment for October 2020 here:

https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/2020_10_06_homeland-threat-assessment.pdf

 You can watch a video from The Caspian Report of What Would Happen If Russia Collapses here:

Blurred Lines Of Fear..

In my opinion, with a plot-line where the fanatic’s plan to start a nuclear exchange between superpowers, after which Aryan Fascists would pick up the pieces could offend an audience or two these days and seem possible, it should be alarming. But what’s more concerning is, It is eerily representative of a motivated extreme faction of governing in America and abroad right now. The film has become more relevant now than when it was made in 2002. Besides the warning from American Intelligence, Europe has its own concerns with the rise of fascism support that has steadily increased over the last 20 years. Europe is facing its own national security concerns at the hand of an extreme political view that after World War II wouldn’t have had the traction it does around the world in 2022. So, when revisiting Ebert’s 2002 review of The Sum of All Fears you also see the shift in geopolitical motivations and political movements where Neo-Nazism is concerned. It creates an interesting political debate and discussion about the change of thought and rise of fascism politics. You can see that from 2002 to 2022, there has been in shift in thinking concerning Fascism Extremists and their views politically.

YALE University author Jason Stanley warned of the rise of racist politics in U.S. and worldwide back in 2018. He wrote about it in the book, “How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them”

You can read an article in CT Insider on Jason Stanley written by Ed Stannard on September 5, 2018 and his book by clicking the link below:

https://www.ctinsider.com/news/article/Yale-author-warns-of-rise-of-fascist-politics-in-16878204.php

Political Climate Change.. 

With the political climate currently what it is with Russia and the rest of the world regarding Ukraine, The Sum of All Fears becomes a geopolitical film study in Russia/U.S. relations. As a society we often to try to find ways to understand something as I stated in my critique, and this film so closely relates to reality we are currently up against with our handling of aid to Ukraine. The film has found renewed viewing following in the political climate of today. The film study becomes the warning the film now seems to be with regards to Russia‘s resolve if desperate. Russia has already threatened Nuclear options indirectly in the media, if there is interference from the West. If writers can so closely write a reality in a film, does it not then become a warned premonition of sorts? If the writer has experience with national security issues, should we value it all the more as that premonition? These are the discussions I find engaging when you merge movies into history. You find a new way of evaluating the world around you and can see how the creative minds within in it give their opinion in visual media.

THE SUM OF ALL RECOMMENDATIONS…

Maybe you like the Jack Ryan books and/or films and that’s why you should watch The Sum of All Fears, or maybe you like Ben Affleck and/or Morgan Freeman! Maybe you haven’t seen it at all! It’s worth a view for any of those reasons or none of the above! I would also recommend it for the simple action espionage thriller factor!

You can read Roger Ebert’s original 2002 review for The Sum of All Fears by clicking on the photo of him below: