~ ~ Author Tom Clancy appears to have lost the plot these days when it comes to writing good, exciting thrillers. The last two books of his that I read, “The Bear and the Dragon” and “Red Rabbit” were so slow and boring they bordered on being soporific. But his back catalogue is still terrific, and many of his novels have been turned into taut, exciting movies; “The Hunt For Red October”, “Patriot Games”, and “Clear and Present Danger” being three of my own particular favourites.
I now have another that I can add to that list. The latest Clancy novel to get the treatment from the Hollywood moguls is “The Sum of all Fears” (2002). I thoroughly enjoyed the novel, and equally enjoyed the film version.

~ ~ Enter the two stars of the show, a very young Jack Ryan, played perfectly by Ben Affleck, and the superb Morgan Freeman as William Cabot, the Director of Intelligence of the CIA. Ryan has been seconded to the CIA as an analyst, following the rise to power of a relatively unknown politician, Alexander Nemerov, (Ciaran Hinds) to the post of President of Russia. America become suspicious of Nemerov when biological weapons are used against rebels in Chechnya, and they discover the existence of the base in the Ukraine that the right wing terrorists are using to produce the “suitcase” nuclear bomb. In fact, disaffected Russian generals carried out the biological attack in Chechnya, but Ryan and Cabot seem to be the only ones on the American side inclined to believe this.

~ ~ I thoroughly enjoyed this tense, taut thriller, despite the fact that I was initially very dubious when I discovered that the role of Jack Ryan was being taken over by Ben Affleck. Ford had almost made the role his own, in the same way as Sean Connery had become almost the definitive James Bond, and I simply couldn’t visualise the part being played successfully by any other actor. Likewise, there was no Admiral James Greer (James Earl Jones) in this movie, as Jack Ryan’s friend and mentor in the CIA, the role being taken over by Morgan Freeman as Bill Cabot.
But the change of actors actually works very well, probably due to this movie being a prequel to later “Jack Ryan” movies, and can easily be watched and enjoyed even if you haven’t watched any of the other films. In fact, Affleck is the third actor to play the role of Jack Ryan, actor Alec Baldwin having played the part in the very first Clancy movie, “The Hunt For Red October”.

~ ~ I purchased the DVD version of the film at HMV just before Christmas 2003 for €14.99, and it is now available at Amazon for £9.99 and at Sendit (Blackstar) for £9.97. Somewhat strangely, the VHS version is more expensive at Amazon at £13.49.
If you do buy the DVD, and happen to have a home cinema sound system, (as I do) then you’re in for a real treat, as this movie really gives all your speakers a thorough workout.
You can also watch a couple of documentary features by the author Tom Clancy and the director Phil Alden Robinson. Clancy is fairly interesting, especially his opening remark. “I'm Tom Clancy…I wrote the book that they ignored.”