Harry Knowles loves "Sum of All Fears"

[Director] Phil Alden Robinson has crafted one of the absolute best spy thrillers ever made. From the way he established the settings, to the way he fills you with dread and hopelessness, to the GODFATHER II moment (you’ll know it) this was cinematically charging. This film is absolutely captivating. Never really doing the expected. Avoid all SPOILER REVIEWS and realize that they do exist, so don’t read the talk backs. The movie was so good I wanted to smoke a pack of cigarettes afterwards, and I don’t smoke.

Clancey's novel is one of my favorites, right after The Hunt for Red October. The first two-thirds of Sum can be tedious, but when It happens in Denver, you realize that the character setups during all that tedious reading were necessary. To me, Sum stands as a Fail-Safe for our time, a cautionary tale that despite the US being the world's only superpower, nuclear war is still a very real possibility.

I was less than happy with the announced changes. Can you think of anything more appropriate today than Arab terrorists? Can you think of a stronger statement than, as in the book, the Arabs themselves try the accused, convict, sentence, and carry out that sentence? In the novel, Ryan stands up to a president who is about to vaporize an entire city to get after a mullah responsible for the entire mess. The moral clarity of that scene stands as one of my favorite literary moments.

Well, maybe it survived the translation to neo-Nazi terrorists, but I doubt it. Nonetheless, it begins to sound like this might be a "must see" film. I'll try and put my disappointments aside.