Robotic Affleck draws cheers The Sum Of All Fears lures US crowds

Arthur J Pais

Ben Affleck, whose hugely popular films include Armageddon and Pearl Harbor, has just acquired a franchise.

The Sum Of All Fears, which cost about $90 million, is the top-grossing film in America this week, with $31 million in three days. Some exhibitors feared that The Sum, with its subject of a terrorist attack on American city, may not draw in millions of viewers in the wake of 9/11.

But it looks like the film is headed for at least a $100 million gross. Expect Affleck to play more Jack Ryan parts in a role made popular by Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford.

This time Ryan has to deal with a nuke attack on Baltimore during the Super Bowl, and fight to avert a nuclear war between Russia and America.

The film has drawn decidedly mixed reviews, but audiences are cheering the film across the US.

Affleck was superb in the recent Changing Lanes as an egotistical and arrogant lawyer who tries to salvage his conscience at the end of the movie. He gave his best performance in that film which was made for $50 million, now a medium range hit, having grossed $72 million in North America.

Here Affleck looks athletic and displays a lot of vigour. But you feel he has taken his part too seriously. So seriously, that he often reacts like a robot.

His character is mostly one-dimensional. You hardly see in it the kind of humour that made James Bond an appealing hero. There are some comic moments when Ryan, a CIA analyst, engages his stern-sounding boss (Morgan Freeman), in discussion. But they are not enough to make the new avatar of Jack Ryan a full-bodied hero.

The often loud, giddy and fleetingly exciting techno-thriller was directed by Phil Alden Robinson (Field Of Dreams, Sneakers), and written by Paul Attanasio (Donnie Brasco, Quiz Show), and Daniel Pyne (Pacific Heights). Each of them has done better work in their other films. But this one surely will be their most successful film yet.

The movie is based on a 1991 Tom Clancy novel in which Arabs and other Muslims were chief villains. The scriptwriters, with Tom Clancy's approval, have toned down the Muslim villainy, making the neo-Nazis the arch villains.

When The Hunt For Red October was released nearly 20 years ago, some critics described Ryan as a thinking man's James Bond. Even while giving some credit to such sentiments, some critics could not but help admire the Bond films more.

The Bond adventures, particularly the ones starring Sean Connery, celebrated the Western world view, but they still remain among the most entertaining and gripping movies of their genre.

The Sum of All Fears has an overtly complicated plot with a narrow view of the world --- the kind of view John Le Carre boldly questioned in his Smiley books three decades ago.

But given its populist sentiments, star appeal, some terrific action sequences, The Sum could continue to play strong at the box-office, though it does not look like turning into a superhit.

There is no point asking how Jack Ryan is played by 29-year-old Ben Affleck, while Alec Baldwin was in his 30s when he played Ryan in The Hunt For Red October (1990) and Harrison Ford was in his 50s when he continued in the series with Patriot Games (1992) and Clear And Present Danger (1994).

All the previous films, which had better drawn and more complex characters, are superior to the current film. Clancy's book was based on the idea that so many nuclear devices were unaccounted for that the world faced a new kind of danger from terrorists. What could happen if a nuclear warhead threatened an American city, the book asked.

The film, being shot when September 11 attacks killed over 3,000 New Yorkers, opens during the Yom Kippur War in 1973, when Israel plans to use an atom bomb in case its ground forces are overrun by Arab armies. The bomb-carrier, however, is downed in the Golan Heights, its atom bomb ejected and remains hidden in the desert. Nearly 30 years later, it is discovered by scavengers who sell its content to a South African arms merchant based in Syria.

The often confusing plot drags on. You suddenly realise that America and Russia are pitted against each other, thanks to the mechanisation of individuals, particularly a neo-Nazi (Alan Bates), who play one superpower against the other for their own political reasons.

Hitler was stupid, the neo-Nazi declares. Instead of letting Americans and Russians fight each other, Hitler fought them by himself, he argues.

In this dangerous situation steps in Ryan who, we soon learn, is the only man in the world who could save America (and, by extension, the world itself). He is not exactly a Rambo, but the script makes him almost one. His task becomes even more complicated because of the ideological differences between the hawkish Secretary of Defense (Philip Baker Hall), and the dovish Secretary of State (Ron Rifkin).

But he gets enough support from the CIA director (played with considerable finesse by Morgan Freeman).

The bomb goes off in Baltimore and the film spends quite a few minutes showing how the city is coming together. It ends on an optimistic, but utterly commonplace note: We see Ryan and his girlfriend relaxing on a lawn in Washington.

The best thing about the film, apart from its visuals and action shots, is strong performances from character actors. In addition to Freeman, James Cromwell (as the American president), Baker Hall and Rifkin are fine. The most interesting performance comes from Liev Schreiber as the field agent who helps Ryan understand international espionage.

But Alan Bates, one of the finest actors on both sides of the Atlantic and who is giving a mesmerising performance in the Broadway hit Fortune's Fool night after night, looks wasted as the neo-Nazi leader.