Affleck’s Jack Ryan Stumbles Over a Nuclear Bomb in Baltimore

The Sum of All Fears wants to be a tense, timely thriller about nuclear war. Instead, it spends its runtime chasing a plot so complicated it loses the thread before it can resolve it. Ben Affleck stars as CIA analyst Jack Ryan, a young man pulled into the White House after a sudden death in Moscow sets off a chain reaction of paranoia, assassination and global brinkmanship. The film is based on Tom Clancy’s 1991 novel, but it resets the timeline to 2002, casting Affleck as a younger version of the character previously played by Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford.

Trailer, via Rotten Tomatoes Classic Trailers.

Opening With the Crash

The story opens with a crash in 1973, when an Israeli warplane carrying a nuclear bomb goes down over the Golan Heights. Fast forward to 2002, and a Syrian scrap collector named Ghazi finds the wreckage. He sells the bomb to a South African arms dealer, Derek Olson, who hands it to a neo-Nazi group led by Austrian billionaire Richard Dressler. Dressler’s plan is simple: detonate a nuclear device in Baltimore while a rogue Russian officer attacks an American aircraft carrier, making the U.S. think Russia started the war.

CIA analyst Jack Ryan is summoned by Director William Cabot to accompany him to Moscow. There, Cabot and Ryan meet new Russian President Alexander Nemerov and tour a nuclear weapons facility. Ryan notices three scientists are missing from the roster. He gets intelligence from “Spinnaker,” an informant inside the Kremlin, and Cabot sends operative John Clark to investigate. Clark tracks the scientists to a former Soviet military base in Ukraine, where Cabot suspects they are building a weapon Russia could use without being traced.

Ryan and his colleagues trace a crate from the Ukraine facility to the Canary Islands, then to Baltimore on a cargo ship. Ryan warns Cabot, who is attending a football game in the city with U.S. President Robert Fowler. Fowler is evacuated before the bomb goes off, but the stadium and much of Baltimore is destroyed. Cabot is mortally wounded. The U.S. believes Russia attacked.

The film tries to keep several threads alive at once: Dressler’s neo-Nazi plot, the rogue Russian officer, the corrupt Russian general paid by Dressler, and the broader conflict over Chechnya. It does not succeed.

Ryan’s Thin Role

Affleck is a fine actor, but he is handed a role that is thin on personality and heavy on exposition. Ryan is supposed to be a brilliant analyst who sees patterns the CIA’s older generation misses. Instead, he spends most of the film reacting to events rather than driving them. His big moment comes when he spots the missing scientists, but the scene plays more like a checklist item than a character beat.

The supporting cast fares better. Morgan Freeman is reliable as Cabot, a veteran official trying to hold the CIA together amid chaos. James Cromwell plays President Fowler with a weary charm, and Liev Schreiber brings menace to John Clark, a shadowy operative who appears twice to move the plot along. Ciarán Hinds is serviceable as President Nemerov, though his character is reduced to a talking head rather than a living threat.

Baltimore Delivers the Payoff

The explosion sequence itself is the best part of The Sum of All Fears. The stadium crumbles, the sky fills with fire, and the city turns to ruin. It is a spectacular set piece that earns its scale. The film’s technical craft is strong, and this is where it shows. The direction is steady, the editing is tight, and the visual effects sell the destruction without overdoing it.

But the aftermath drags. The film spends too long showing the political fallout, with Fowler ordering a nuclear strike on Russia while the U.S. military is unsure who really fired the bomb. The tension should be at its peak. Instead, it stalls.

The Missing Scientists

The film’s central mystery is the disappearance of three scientists from the Russian facility’s roster. Ryan notices them early on, and Cabot sends Clark to investigate. The investigation leads to the Ukraine base, where Cabot suspects the scientists are building a weapon Russia could use without being traced.

This thread is the film’s strongest narrative engine. It gives Ryan a clear objective and a reason to race against time. But the film buries it under too much other business. The Chechnya conflict, the corrupt Russian general, and the neo-Nazi group all crowd the frame, and the scientists get lost in the shuffle.

The Running Time Works Against It

At 124 minutes, The Sum of All Fears is a long movie for a thriller. It should be tighter. The pacing sags in the middle, where the investigation into the missing scientists and the crate takes far too long to pay off. Scenes of Ryan analyzing data and following leads drag because the film trusts the audience to follow the trail but does not trust itself to make it clear.

The film’s structure is also awkward. It jumps between Baltimore, Moscow, the Ukraine, the Canary Islands and Washington, D.C., without always landing the transitions smoothly. Some scenes feel like filler, and others feel like they were cut from a longer edit. The film would benefit from a sharper editor willing to trim the fat.

The Soundtrack Holds Up

The original motion picture soundtrack was released on June 4, 2002, by Elektra Records. It was composed and orchestrated by Jerry Goldsmith, a legendary composer known for scores that build tension without overwhelming the picture. His work here does the film proud, layering strings and percussion under scenes of crisis and suspense.

The music is a constant presence, underscoring the film’s sense of dread even when the dialogue flags. It is one of the few elements that consistently works across the entire runtime.

The Verdict on the Franchise

The Sum of All Fears is a reboot of the Jack Ryan series, but it feels like a missed opportunity. It has a solid premise, a capable cast and a handful of strong sequences. But the script is too loose, the plotting is too convoluted and the central character is too thinly drawn to carry the weight of a nuclear thriller.

The film’s tagline promises 27,000 nuclear weapons, with one missing. That is a bold promise. The film delivers a bomb in Baltimore, but it never quite delivers the global catastrophe it threatens. The stakes are high, but the execution is uneven.

The film’s financial performance suggests audiences disagreed. With a worldwide theatrical run of $193.9 million against a production budget of $68 million plus marketing costs, it was a commercial success. But that success was built on spectacle rather than substance.

Final Score

The Sum of All Fears is a film that aims for the heights of the Cold War thriller but settles for a muddled middle. It has moments of genuine tension and a few truly memorable images, but the overall experience is diminished by a script that cannot keep pace with its own ambition.

The film’s final score is 5.9 out of 10.

Ben Affleck · Jack Ryan · movie review · nuclear thriller · Tom Clancy