Incredibly, The Sum Of All Fears' takes a sure-fire premise and turns it into one of the most ugly and boring films of the year. Amongst all the concern about whether Ben Affleck could effectively replace Harrison Ford and renew this tiring franchise, the filmmakers seem to have forgotten that the best pick-me-up would have been a decent script. This one's awful. We know from the outset precisely what's going to happen, and when it does - after an interminable hour of preamble - it's virtually a non-event: the nuclear explosion which takes out Baltimore is realized with about as much visual flair as a White House press conference. Worse, the series of events it initiates rapidly mushrooms into ludicrousness - thanks to ham-fisted, telemovie plotting - and interest is quickly lost. The direction is patchy, Goldsmith's music is typically dire, and the performances are lukewarm at best. Sure, Affleck's a nice enough substitute Ryan, but there's no getting around it: bucket-loads of boyish charm are no match for the fatherly, patriotic gravitas of Ford.
Review of The Sum of All Fears
