Sum of All Fears (Spoilers)

[Richard III]

Saw it. Reviewing it for CFC:

Plusses:

Tension effectively built up in early scenes
Tension during and after bomb attack - well paced
You actually shudder a little at the sight of the mushroom cloud going up with the skyline of what's left of the city behind- it's been a long time since I've seen THAT image.
Sly implication that the leader of the plot is Jorge Haider
No Jar Jar Binks
Sexiest Cathy Ryan so far.
James Cromwell - measured performance as usual
Morgan Freeman - amusing all round, you'd take a bullet for him
Colm Feore IS Pierre Trudeau playing an arms dealer
Neo-Nazi plot toned down so it's not too ridiculous
Russian President, whoever he is
Cool shot of carrier getting smacked by cruise missles - show more, please!
This John Clark is much better than Defoe's, who just seemed like a bitter hippie wanna-be; this guy is more the gen-X cynic.

Don't Know:
Affleck. He was ok. Jury still out.

Minuses:
Baltimore gets nuked, but no one seems to care so much
Gators in Superbowl
Annoying bit players in CIA
High implausible scene count (see below)
No scenes with Natalie Portman with white suit chained to a pole

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The first half was great, second half suffered from growing implausibility. Not Clancy's best movie effort (which remains Red Oktober) but not so bad overall.

Implausibility issues:

1. If US forces on alert, why is it so easy for Backfires to hit the carrier? And why is is that carriers in movies never have a screen, but they always do in real life?

2. How do F-16s just saunter into Russian airspace and drop gravity bombs from 20,000 feet up when Russian forces supposedly on wartime alert status?

3. How many times can the Russkies actually raise alert status without firing?

4. Wouldn't Cathy-soon-to-be-Ryan be blind? When the nuke goes off, the blast wave breaks glass, but she manages to fall behind the desk AS the glass is breaking, not after it reaches her.

5. Yes Ben, I too have always dreamed of walking around for hours in fresh fallout without getting ill.

6. Constant turbulence on AF1.

7. Ridiculous stupidity demonstrated by senior US advisors: no living adult would beleive that you could nuke Russia's land-based ICBM force and then expect its President to "just call it a day" and stand down his SLBMs because he's had a rough weekend.

8. After what must be a day or even two, after the bomb drops, wouldn't the guys in Air Force One have calmed down a little - and wouldn't they be actually asking Langley for input on the bomb by then?

9. The hotline scene... is it really that easy to "tap in?"

10. Final scene - yes, it IS necessary to explain EVERYTHING to the poor audience. And you would figure that ceremony would be in Baltimore, not the White House lawn, but that's just me being picky.

R.III

 

[Simon Darkshade]

So, one would be correct in repeating the previous opinion that they slaughtered the book?

I can't wait until they do the film version of Bear and the Dragon, where the bad guys will be changed from China to Burma so not to offend or reinforce sterotypes. How the armored divisions of Myanmar make their way to the Siberian border is yet to be seen; the probable plot device will be smugglers disguising them as yaks.

The Sum of All Fears - The more I hear about the film version, the more I despise it for wrecking a potentially great work.

 

[Richard III]

Simon, I must admit that this book was the one of his that I paid the least attention to; I only really skimmed "Sum." I was far more of a fan of the lighter "operational" thrillers like Red Storm and Debt of Honor.

But the guy I went with considered "Sum" one of his two favorites; he said "just like the book" at the opening few minutes, but didn't seem to share the same view walking out. He was harder on it than I was. But I think he - like me - was more pissed at the chain of silliness than the missing Arab issue: the whole Nazi scheme is more of a pointless backdrop than a serious plot point. Really, the way it worked, the whole thing could have just as easily been a bomb plot organized by Senator Palpatine; it didn't really play that much in the sequence of events.

Oh yeah, and implausibility #11: why does an Israeli plane with an A-Bomb operate alone within SAM range?

 

[Simon Darkshade]

Originally posted by Richard III
Simon, I must admit that this book was the one of his that I paid the least attention to; I only really skimmed "Sum." I was far more of a fan of the lighter "operational" thrillers like Red Storm and Debt of Honor.

But the guy I went with considered "Sum" one of his two favorites; he said "just like the book" at the opening few minutes, but didn't seem to share the same view walking out. He was harder on it than I was. But I think he - like me - was more pissed at the chain of silliness than the missing Arab issue: the whole Nazi scheme is more of a pointless backdrop than a serious plot point. Really, the way it worked, the whole thing could have just as easily been a bomb plot organized by Senator Palpatine; it didn't really play that much in the sequence of events.

Oh yeah, and implausibility #11: why does an Israeli plane with an A-Bomb operate alone within SAM range?

I will address the points back to front:

1.) The A-4 Skyhawk that crashes with the nuke attached was being flown without the knowledge that it was "packing". It is explained in the initial stage of the book, where the stand down of nuclear weapons is ordered, but the technicians forget to remove this particular one from the Skyhawk, thinking it were a fuel tank. It is plausible in the book.

2.) The Arab thing was the key to the book, especially when Fowler wants to nuke Qum as vengeance, which was the whole secondary part of the plot. (It was a very good and complicated plot, and well done in the detail)
The Nazi thing is just sheer stupidity, as is the younger Ryan thing.
That really buggers up the whole point of the plot/book/film in my view...How does a young fool get on the hotline and convince the Soviet Premier about what is going on?

3.) I read everything in detail, and don't have any particular favourites, but this one was fairly amusing in Clancy's quick two page solution to the Middle East question (Why doesn't George W Bush just call the Jesuits? ), and in the lack of TOO much sermonizing on his view of the ideal political system and world.
And it lacks some of the appalling factual and cultural errors, as well as the deterioration of style, that mark his later work.

 

[Richard III]

I suppose I was driven away from it by the very fact that his Middle Eastern views were awfully simplistic. I think my first exposure to it was in a bookstore where I flipped it open to a reference to Swiss guards keeping the peace, read enough to realize it was a bad remake of "Black Sunday," laughed and thought, "ok, this one's kaka."

I remember more about the escalation in the book than I do the rest, and the book's escalation sequence is considerably more plausible than the movie's, which reeked of a bad escalation ladder in the textbooks that used to litter my PoliSci classes in the 1980s.

R.III

 

[gonzo_for_civ]

I thought the entire nuclear explosion was a bit unrealstics. People getting hit and then walking away and no one was worried about radiation except for the people walking towards the very center.

 

[damunzy]

It seems that the movie will be good if you do a few things:
1. Don't read the book - Check, I haven't read this one.
2. Suspend reality for 2 hours - Hard to do, didn't work in Attack of the Bad Movie but I will try with this movie.

Going to see it with my Sister in-law b/c my wife is too upset by movies like this. I love movies where the A-bombs start to blowing up!

 

[Flatlander Fox]

I haven't seen it yet, and wouldn't have paid to go to it anyway.

I had suspected that the movie would be a disgusting hack, especially with a younger guy playing Jack Ryan AFTER the other movies took place.

Clancy's pulpit pounding IS getting a little old, and his offensive heap of crap that was "Bear and the Dragon" was really disappointing.

Simon: LOL@Yaks

 

[The Art of War]

I liked this movie, and even though I knew about the nuclear blast, it still kept me on the edge of my seat. I was glad to see that it at least started out in the Yom Kippur War, even though the pilot should've been about 17, and the jet would've had his wingmates. It was shot down too easily. It should've been in the 80s or early 90s, so that it didn't conflict with the other 3, but you can't have everything. So, overall, if you dismiss a lot of the book, you're fine. Oh, can't forget hot Bridget Moynahan.

 

[Brad]

OK... so I saw the movie tonight. I liked it quite a bit, however I did not read the book (but I will now- which reminds me.. I have an overdue book to go back to the liberary).

Yeah he was in the fallout quite a bit. But they did say that the blast was quite a bit less then the hiroshima bomb.

And why didn't the cops use more force when he was chocking that guy. "Hey you, stop trying to kill that guy and come on to the white house"

But overall it was quite a tense and well done movie.