Review of The Sum of All Fears (2002) by Santana L — 30 Dec 2012
By Zanele Jiane.
Decision support systems were invented to minimise the level of uncertainty and to ease the process of decision making, these were theorised and started getting formalised in the 1950's, these include many concepts, taxonomies, linear programming being one of them, these systems should by now and matured enough to live up to their purpose, but not so much.
In The Sum of All Fears we see the cabinet of the United States of America grossly plagued by uncertainty in a time of war and have critical decisions that need to be made to preserve millions of lives, and they had to rely on Jack Ryan.
Ben Affleck is a talented star and as Jack Ryan he shines, his role is augmented by a horde of veteran actors, Morgan Freeman, Rachel Monaghan, James Cromwell to name a few, there are very few unknowns in this movie, even the Kremlin boasts Hollywood heavyweights.
What I find interesting in this movie is that all of the cabinet of the USA in this movie is played by people who normally play villains or antagonists in many other movies; James Cromwell is a villain in L.A. Confidential, Bruce McGill in Matchstick Men, Ron Rifkin in The Negotiator.
'The most deadly weapon in the history of mankind will be fired in fear instead of anger', these were uttered by President Fowler (James Cromwell) at the end of the movie, he echoes Jack Ryan's appraisal of the situation with President Nemerov, who prefers to be guilty of someting he did not do, rather than appear weak in the face of his enemies.
President Nemerov represent a man, who, via the unconscious mind, based on poor/bad programming in the past, keeps sabotaging himself unconsciously while trying to accomplish success in his endeavours. Nemerov has in his armed forces, splinter factions that aim to accomplish what Hitler failed to do and use every chance they get to provoke America to go into war with Russia, so when they wipe each other out in a nuclear war, the superpowers will be no more and the hopes of taking over the world can become easier then.
This movie has a wonderful conclusion where the bad guys each dies brutally as the score "Nessun Dorma" swell up, a fantastic sequence.
Highly recommended.
This review of The Sum of All Fears (2002) was written by Santana L on 30 Dec 2012.
The Sum of All Fears has generally received mixed reviews.
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