July
2002
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Issy
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Now
Playing At The Adelphia-Astoria
The Sum Of All Fears
By
Issy Chaplin
The
Sum of All Fears, the latest adaptation of Tom Clancy's good-American-guys-with-good-machines-beat-the-bad-guys-whether-they're-Ruskies-or-anyone-else
franchise, intrigues Adam Jeffers for reasons that have little
to do with what happens on screen. Jeffers, the proprietor at
the Adelphia-Astoria movie house at the corner of Calhoun and
South Warren Streets, is, as you might guess, a film aficionado
who devours reviews as enthusiastically as he settles in to watch
the latest releases. The Sum of All Fears is a fine action-adventure
film, he says, and he doesn't understand why nearly every critic
is muddling its story with a preoccupation about Ben Affleck assuming
the leading character's role.
Fears
is the fourth adaptation of a Clancy novel, following The Hunt
For Red October (the best of them), Patriot Games,
and Clear and Present Danger. Each of the films centered
on Jack Ryan, an ex-Marine, military historian and CIA intelligence
analyst who has a knack for landing in the middle of whatever
political-military crisis happens to be brewing. In Red October,
he discerned the crew of a missing Soviet submarine was in fact
attempting to defect. In Patriot Games he saved members
of the British royal family from assassination, incurring the
wrath of a thinly disguised Irish Republican Army. In Clear
and Present Danger, he faced down not only a Colombian drug
cartel, but the President of the United States, as well. This
time around, Ryan is drawn into tense relations with a Russian
president who has the bad luck to assume office just as a European
group of new-fascists plan to set off a nuclear explosion that,
they hope, will push the United States and the Russia into a war.
The
brouhaha that Jeffers shakes his head about is the fact that Affleck's
Ryan is young, just meeting his soon-to-be fiancé, and
a very junior analyst at CIA. The previous films traced his rise
to the position of director of central intelligence, the head
spook himself. Not a critic has up the opportunity to remark on
this, "as if it has something to do with the quality of the
film," as Jeffers puts it. "Critics," he remarks,
"think too much."
The
Sum of All Fears is a fine action movie. It doesn't have much
of a message, except that we should all get along, but even that
is probably inferred because of today's war on terrorism. Certainly,
the plot has its share of holes, but the film moves along at such
a brisk pace and offers performances so clean and likable, who
cares whether Jack Ryan somehow found his way into the Wayback
Machine? Affleck portrays Ryan with a nice balance of earnestness,
bravery and naiveté, while Morgan Freeman is a strong CIA
director and James Cromwell a believable president who swings
between fury at attacks on the country and wistfulness at the
turn taken by his presidency. While special effects play a major
role in the movie - as they do in all Clancy titles - in Fears
they are rarely forced. The detonation of a nuclear explosion
about halfway through the film is chilling in its detail and authenticity.
"So,
if they got so much right, why bother to even mention how they
reshuffled the characters?" Jeffers wonders. "It's like
no one will just watch a movie and judge it on its merits, anymore.
It seems to me you should just watch the movie, like or not like
it, tell your friends to see it, or don't.
"In
this day and age," he says, "I think you have to be
braver and braver to try and make a film. I'd try it myself if
I had any courage. You just never know what people are going to
say."
###
Issy Chaplin is a Trenton native, now working in the Department
of Taxation.
