Which is, apparently, the fear of an all out nuclear war between the United States and Russia. There’s a funny scene right at the opening of this movie – well, I found it funny. The President of the United States (as played by James Cromwell) is surrounded by his top aides and cabinet members and they are rehearsing for a “nuclear event”. At the conclusion, the Prez turns to his CIA chief (as played by Morgan Freeman) and says something like, “you know, we’re still going through this fire drill like it’s the Cold War, are the Russians really our biggest threat?”

Well, it turns out, our biggest nuclear fear is not from the Russians, but , ta-dah, the Nazis. Yes, the Nazis are back. Yes, this movie is set in 2002 and the Nazis are back. Hitler’s boys are planning to hit us with a nuke, hope we blame the Russians, and then launch an all out war against them. While the Nazis sit back and pick up the pieces after it’s over and I guess end up dominating the world. Or maybe it’s not the Nazis, maybe it’s CHAOS from the old “Get Smart” show. I don’t know. I guess it’s not politically correct to make the evil nuclear terrorists, say, Middle Eastern guys?But I shouldn’t be so cynical. After all, this is based on the Tom Clancy book and didn’t he write about terrorist planes flying into the White House and the Capitol building before September 11th? Maybe he should be required reading at the FBI.

Ben Affleck takes the role of Jack Ryan, the CIA guy with all the right hunches, made popular in a series of past movies by Harrison Ford. First of all, you Ben Affleck, are no Harrison Ford. Not even close. Of course, this time super Jack is back to being a novice in the CIA, not Ford’s accomplished Jack Ryan who already has the President’s confidence. But, still, Affleck is weak. And I mean that literally. He’s weak voiced, weak looking and weak acting. He just doesn’t have that superhero appeal. They give him a girlfriend so he has a reason for living but that subplot is weak too. In fact, this whole movie is pretty weak.

Here are some examples – the nuke explodes at what I guess is supposed to be the Super Bowl Game in Baltimore. Yeah, that will happen. Not the nuke thing – I mean the Super Bowl in Baltimore. And they use a domed stadium. When did that happen? Also, after the nuke blows up a big chunk of Baltimore, Jack Ryan heads over to investigate how the nuke got in the U.S. As he’s headed for danger, an associate calls the Baltimore police to help him out and they get there in about five minutes. Hello? Didn’t a nuke just explode? How do they have the time and manpower to respond to Jack’s problem?

And wait till you see the lame hospital scene with the injured and dying people and the comforting doctors. Yikes. About the only thing worthwhile here is following President Cromwell through the crises. He’s got a fine group of veteran actors around him and they are worth watching. It also takes Affleck out of the movie for a while and that’s a good thing.

For me “The Sum of All Fears” is that I’m going to have to see Ben Affleck play Jack Ryan again. I give the movie a “5.0” on the scale. Ben gets a “1”.