The Sum of All Fears

Phil Alden Robinson took over a reset of the Jack Ryan series. Harrison Ford dropped out in June 2000 over script problems; the part went to Ben Affleck in a 10 million dollar deal, the character rebuilt younger. In Tom Clancy’s novel the attackers are Arab nationalists; the film makes them neo-Nazis, which screenwriter Daniel Pyne puts down to avoiding cliche and to the new nationalism then surfacing in Europe. Shooting ran in Montreal from February 2001 to June 2001, with the stadium sequence at the Olympic Stadium and further work at the Diefenbunker outside Ottawa. The New York Times reported that the Pentagon charged Paramount under 1 million dollars for equipment and personnel, then objected to the original script, in which cruise missiles destroy the carrier; the filmmakers gave way and only the flight operations are wrecked on screen, shot with miniatures. CIA liaison Chase Brandon took unclassified paper off the boards at Langley so the Russia desk could be rebuilt in Montreal. The film won supporting visual effects at the first Visual Effects Society awards. A good fit if you want a thriller that spends its weight on crisis rooms, phone lines and misread signals rather than on pursuit. Not for anyone who would rather not watch a nuclear device go off in an American city.