The Sum of All Fears is a 2002 American film directed by Phil Alden Robinson,
and based on the book of the same name by Tom
Clancy. It stars Ben Affleck and Morgan
Freeman and was released in the United States on May
31, 2002.
Plot summary
During the Yom Kippur War in 1973, an Israeli
A-4 jet carrying a nuclear bomb is shot down over the desert in the Middle East. In
2002, the bomb is found and sold to an arms dealer named Olson (Colm
Feore), he sells it to an Austrian neo-nazi named
Richard Dressler (Alan Bates) for 45 million dollars on the
black market.
Meanwhile, the United States becomes concerned when Alexander Nemerov (Ciaran Hinds)
becomes the new president of the Russian Federation. Nemerov is seen as a hard-liner with regards
to his control over the Russian military. Director of Central
Intelligence William Cabot (Morgan Freeman)
seeks the opinion of young CIA analyst Jack Ryan (Ben Affleck), who has done extensive research on Nemerov's life and career. While on a routine inspection of
Russia's nuclear weapons facilities, Cabot and Ryan are invited to the Kremlin to meet
with Nemerov personally. Tension arises when Nemerov likens the United States' involvement in Russian-Chechen affairs to
"sleeping with another man's wife", with Russia playing the part of the betrayed and vengeful husband.
During the inspection, Ryan notices that three senior Russian nuclear technicians are not present at the facility. Nemerov's
aide Anatoli Grushkov (Michael Byrne) attempts to assuage Ryan's concerns by telling him
that the three scientists are out sick, on vacation, and recently deceased, respectively. Cabot's covert informant in Moscow,
known by his codename 'Spinnaker', tells Cabot that Grushkov's explanations are false, and that the whereabouts of the three
scientists are truly unknown to the Russian government. Upon arrival in Washington, Cabot sends CIA operative John Clark (Liev Schreiber) to track down the
missing scientists. Clark discovers the three scientists in Ukraine constructing Dressler's
bomb.
When President Nemerov takes responsibility for an unauthorized gas-warfare attack on Grozny,
the capital city of Chechnya, American President J. Robert
Fowler (James Cromwell) and his administration become concerned with the
volatility of Nemerov's military policies and respond by sending peacekeeping troops to Chechnya. Meanwhile, the nuclear bomb
arrives in a crate in Baltimore, Maryland,
and is placed at an American football stadium disguised as a cigarette vending machine. In a recording, Dressler reveals his
intentions in placing the bomb in Baltimore: frustrated and angered with the American and Russian paternalism over smaller
European nations, Dressler has resolved to destroy both nations, much as Adolf Hitler
desired to in the Second World War. Dressler notes that Hitler was "not crazy", but
"stupid" in that he tried to fight the Soviet Union and the United States simultaneously. Rather, one must get "America and
Russia to fight each other... and destroy each other." By detonating a Russian-made nuclear weapon on American soil, Dressler
hopes to aggravate an already tense relationship between the two superpowers to the point of full-blown nuclear war.
Ryan attempts to inform Cabot that the bomb is in Baltimore, but it turns out that President Fowler and Cabot are attending a
football game in the stadium where the bomb is planted. The noise from the game make it excessively difficult for Cabot to hear
Ryan's warning. After several tries, Ryan gets the warning across and Cabot orders the Secret
Service agents to rush the President out of the stadium. The President manages to escape the stadium, but only moments
before the bomb detonates, destroying a significant part of the city. After the explosion, President Fowler is rescued by
United States Marines, and taken airborne on a Boeing E-4B Advanced Airborne Command Post with his cabinet. Immediately, they fear that the bomb was
Russian. Ryan and his girlfriend Dr. Catherine Muller (Bridget Moynahan) survive the
blast, but Cabot dies later at a hospital.
After learning about the explosion, Dressler calls his neo-fascist friend who is a general in the Russian Air Force. In an
attempt to further aggravate the situation, the general orders his Tu-22M Backfire pilots
to strike an American aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74) in the
North Sea under the false information that a United States ICBM has
attacked Moscow. The strike is successful, and in response President Fowler orders three United States Air Force F-16s to attack the
originating Russian air base. Tensions mount as trust between Fowler and Nemerov rapidly deteriorates. To prove that he is
willing to take the exchange to the next level, Fowler orders the military to maximum readiness, preparing to launch a massive
nuclear strike on Russian military targets. Seeing that the U.S. has dispatched stealth bombers and nuclear submarines, Nemerov
prepares to launch his ICBM's on the United States.
Ryan first discovers from the Army radiological assessment team that the plutonium for the
Baltimore bomb was manufactured in Savannah River nuclear plant in South Carolina in
1968, thus indicating that the original device was of American, not Russian, origin. He tries, unsuccessfully, to communicate
this information to President Fowler. Ryan further discovers that Dressler was behind the Baltimore attack. After being with the
dying William Cabot, Ryan takes Cabot's personal effects, and with Cabot's text messenger, asks Spinnaker how the American
plutonium ended up in a Russian bomb. Spinnaker tells him that the United States had secretly managed to send it to Israel for
their nuclear weapons program, an allegation also made by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre in their book,
The Fifth Horseman[1].
Ryan gets to the Baltimore harbor docks, only to find Dressler's American contact Lod Mason murdered by Dressler's South
African assassin. The assassin attacks Ryan, who manages to get the upper hand on his attacker. Ryan tries to force the assassin
to talk, but is thwarted as the Maryland State Police arrive. Via a Maryland State Police helicopter, Ryan manages to get to
The Pentagon, where he is able to communicate the truth to President Nemerov. Relying on
Ryan's word, Nemerov proposes a plan to Fowler to a stand down. Fowler follows suit, and nuclear war is averted.
The two presidents meet and make peace as agents of both governments hunt down and assassinate the terrorist conspirators.
John Clark slits Olson's throat, Russian agents pursue and shoot the traitorous Russian Air Force general in a snow-covered
forest, and as Grushkov looks on, a carefully-placed car bomb does not kill Dressler's bodyguard when he starts the car, but
kills Dressler after he replaces his bodyguard at the wheel, closes the door, and punches his cigarette lighter, which pops up as
his car explodes. [In terrorist circles, drivers began to be required to start the car engine as a response to car bombs;
assassins have had to adapt to avoid needless killings.][2]
The final scene takes place in Washington, D.C., where Presidents Fowler and Nemerov
address the Baltimore tragedy and the future of Weapons of Mass Destruction
during a speech on the White House lawn. In a nearby park, Ryan and Cathy Mueller are having a picnic when they are approached by
Grushkov. It is revealed that Grushkov is Spinnaker: Cabot's covert source in Moscow. Grushkov gives Dr. Mueller a "modest gift"
for her engagement to Ryan. Mueller and Ryan are perplexed, as they have not told anyone of their engagement. Ryan asks Grushkov
how he could possibly know this secret, but he simply smiles, shrugs and walks away.
Tagline: 27,000 Nuclear Weapons. One Is Missing.
Main cast
Deviations from the book
While the basic plot was the same, there were significant changes from the book.
Noting these substantial changes, in the commentary track on the DVD release, Tom Clancy jokingly introduces himself as "the author of the book that he [Phil Alden Robinson, who is
present with Clancy] ignored".
- The original terrorists in the novel were Muslim extremists, but in the movie, they are changed to neo-fascists. A common misconception is that this was done
as a reaction to the September 11 attacks.
However, the movie was filmed months before 9/11; it finished filming in June 2001.
(Ironically, the 9/11 attacks resemble the events at the end of Debt of Honor, the
novel after The Sum of All Fears.) On the "making-of" DVD extra, the
director says that this was purely for elements relating to the plot, as Muslim extremists would not be able to plausibly
accomplish all that was necessary for the story to work. The Council on
American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) did mount a 2-year
lobbying campaign that ended on January 26, 2001, against using
"Muslim villains", as the original book version did. Director Phil Alden Robinson is quoted in a letter to CAIR saying "I hope you will be reassured that I have no intention of promoting
negative images of Muslims or Arabs, and I wish you the best in your continuing efforts to combat discrimination."[1] Screenwriter Dan Pyne claims that the decision to not use Arab terrorists was “possibly because that has become a
cliché. At the time that I started writing the Sum Of All Fears, Joerg Haider was
just starting to come into play in Austria. And simultaneous with that, I think, there was some neo-nationalist activity in
Holland, and there was stuff going on in Spain and in Italy. So it seemed like a logical and lasting idea that would be
universal.”[3] It has also been noted that a larger
percent of profits stems from international audiences, and American filmmakers work to avoid alienating large segments of this
customer base.[3]
- The attacked city was changed from Denver to Baltimore. References to the "Super Bowl", "San Diego Chargers", and "Minnesota Vikings" were made
generic. The game scenes were filmed at Olympic Stadium in Montreal, with CFL teams standing in for the game's participants.
Although the game clearly takes places indoors, overhead shots of Baltimore in the film reveal its football stadium as being an
outdoor facility.
- In the novel, President Fowler did not attend the game, relying on the advice of the Secret Service.
- The "battle for Berlin" is excluded from the script (since the book was based in the late
1980s there is still a Soviet garrison in the city and during the course of the book, there is a clash between Russian and
American tanks)- although the Berlin Brigade, which was historically deactivated in
1994, is mentioned at the beginning of the movie.
- Spinnaker (the mole in the Russian government) is actually found to be an unreliable source because he is making up or
changing information for his own benefit to become a president of the USSR (or the
Russian Federation).
- Robby Jackson's role is omitted.
- Dr. Elizabeth Elliot's role is omitted.
- Instead of the U.S. fighters shooting down Libyan MiGs, the
USS John C. Stennis is attacked by Backfire bombers.
- Since the film is a reboot, some details of Jack Ryan's life are changed. In the
film, Jack Ryan is a low-level intelligence analyst, whereas he is
the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence in the
book. The film also shows Ryan dating Catherine Muller and meeting John Clark for the first time, while in the book he is already
married to Muller and they have children; Ryan met Clark in Clear and Present
Danger. (Curiously, if Ryan had been portrayed as in the book, it might have been possible to cast Harrison Ford—the "reference Jack Ryan"—is the role, although he might have been expensive. Once before—in
The Hunt for Red October (film)— a director cast another
actor(because Ford was busy at the time), and the critics expressed disappointment.)[citation needed]
Sources
- ^ Larry Collins and Dominique LaPierre, The Fifth Horseman, 1980 (hardcover),
Simon and Schuster, New York City, page 125 (with the difference that this specifies 572 pounds of enriched weapons-grade uranium
between 1960 and 1967, not plutonium in 1968)
- ^ Gayle Rivers, The War Against the Terrorists: How to Win It, 1986
(hardcover), Stein and Day Publishers, New York City, page 207
- ^ a b producer: Lauren F. Cardillo. "Casting Calls", Running Down Dreams Productions
& The Discovery Times Channel, 2003.
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