Review of The Sum of All Fears (2002) by Dawdlingpoet — 28 Nov 2021

This movie reminded me of a season of the drama show 24 in some ways, with the bomb reaching US soil and due to other reasons which I can't really say or I'd give some of the story away. The main difference would be that this is not as action packed as 24, although there is some action in the movie its more of a thriller than an action movie per se. Its more of a dialogue based movie I think, you have to pay attention to keep up with story in terms of what the main character Jack finds out about the people behind the bombing, the history of the nuclear device and so on. It is also true to say that the pace of the movie increases as the story continues, so it is quite suspenseful and indeed the story 'hots up' as it becomes more clear whats going on and Jack sets out on his crusade to stop the cold war from starting.

On a side note, I did chuckle a bit when I recognised Ken Jenkins who appears in this movie as Admiral Pollack, who is much better known as Dr. Bob Kelso,the cranky old doctor in the sitcom Scrubs - this is definitely a different character to portray.

I have to say that I thought there was something a bit kind of unbelievable about this movie, about the story, what happens and the state of affairs afterwards (I'm trying not to give too much away) that I found a little hard to accept. However, it wasn't a really bad movie, certainly Ben Affleck and Morgan Freeman gave pretty good performances, I didn't notice anything particularly bad about the character portrayals, though it was perhaps a bit too predictable and slow to grab my attention, so overall I can only really personally rate this with a 3 star rating. I think that those who are interested in political thrillers will get more out of it and will enjoy it more than people looking for a movie full of action and special effects, though I can't help but feel that the story is flawed somehow but it is none the less an entertaining movie I feel and I think it would be a bit cruel to rate it any lower, so 5 out of 10 it is.