After September 11, Hollywood imposed some self-censorship, scaling back on their action/violence films by deeming them "inappropriate" for the time. Now that violence is back in style and, I guess, once again appropriate, Hollywood is unleashing a series of films bent on exploiting people's fear that terrorists will strike again on our soil, but this time with a nuclear weapon.

In fairness, The Sum of All Fears was written long before the September 11 attack. It was a novel by Tom Clancy and is part of the series of thrillers featuring Jack Ryan, played previously by Harrison Ford (Clear and Present Danger and Patriot Games). Now Ben Affleck is in the starring role. He’s younger and almost bookwormish, and that is supposedly more faithful to the character in the book. He only calls on his near-super-hero skills when the moment requires it.

The story is about a terrorist group that figures that the easiest way to have the United States and Russia destroy each other is to have them fight each other. And they figure that the best way to do that is to raise some of those old Cold War fears (the film wisely chooses Nazis as the bad guys, likely because most everyone can agree to be against them and that guarantees worldwide distribution for the film). So, they devise a plan to smuggle a nuclear weapon onto American soil, detonate it, and then leave enough fingerprints around so that the US points to Russia as the culprit. It’s Ryan, of course, who must save the world from bumbling bureaucrats and overanxious military leaders.

For the most part I liked The Sum of All Fears because it’s smarter than most action films of this type. It raises a lot of very serious questions about what really could happen if terrorists managed to do this and what the outcome of their actions would be. And, of course, the lavish special effects drive the feeling home like few films we’ve seen. But I also couldn’t help thinking that it contradicts itself simply by its presentation. Although this fear has been with us for years (and 1997’s The Peacemaker already tread similar ground), it’s timeliest to cash in now. This is simply big-budget Hollywood entertainment and exploitation with some lessons attached. Would we still call it entertainment if it really happened? Would this type of film even be appropriate anymore? The Sum of All Fears raises more questions than it should, but still gets a *** rating.

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