The Sum Of All Fears

PLOT

In 1973, during the Yom Kippur War, an Israeli warplane carrying a nuclear bomb is shot down. In 2002, a Syrian scrap collector uncovers a large unexploded bomb buried in a field in the Golan Heights. He sells it to a South African black market arms trafficker named Olson, who recognizes it as the nuclear bomb that was lost during that war. He then sells it to a neo-fascist group led by Austrian billionaire Richard Dressler, whose aim is to start a war between the United States and Russia that will devastate them both, and leave a united fascist Europe to rule the world.

CIA analyst Jack Ryan is summoned by CIA Director William Cabot to accompany him to Moscow to meet Russian President Nemerov. There, Cabot and Ryan are allowed to examine a Russian nuclear weapons facility as prescribed by the START treaty, where Ryan notices the absence of three scientists listed on the facility's roster. After receiving reliable intelligence from a confidential secure informant inside the Kremlin, codenamed "Spinnaker", Cabot sends operative John Clark to Russia to investigate. Clark tracks the missing scientists to a former Soviet military facility in Ukraine, where Cabot suspects they are building a secret nuclear weapon that Russia could use without any method to trace it back to them (relations between the U.S. and Russia are strained due to the latter's war in Chechnya).

Ryan and his colleagues discern that a crate from the facility in Ukraine was flown to the Canary Islands, then sent to Baltimore on a cargo ship. Ryan warns Cabot, who is attending a football game in the city with U.S. President Fowler, about a bomb threat. Fowler is evacuated before the bomb (at the stadium) detonates, but the stadium is destroyed and Cabot is mortally wounded. Further worsening matters, a corrupt Russian Air Force general who has been paid by Dressler (unbeknownst to the U.S.) sends warplanes to attack a U.S. aircraft carrier, heavily damaging it and leading the U.S. to believe that Russia perpetrated the nuclear bombing.

Ryan learns from a radiation assessment team that the isotopic signature from the nuclear blast indicates it was manufactured in the U.S.; evidence which seems to exonerate Russia. In Syria, Clark tracks down Ghazi, one of the men who found the bomb, now dying of radiation exposure. He tells Clark that he sold the bomb to Olson, who lives in Damascus. Ryan's colleagues at Langley infiltrate Olson's computer and download files that implicate Dressler as the person who bought the plutonium and who is behind the nuclear attack.

Ryan is able to reach the National Military Command Center in The Pentagon and get a message to Nemerov, saying that he knows that Russia was not behind the attack, while also asking Nemerov to stand down his forces as a show of good faith. Nemerov agrees to do so as Fowler follows suit. The participants in the conspiracy, including Olson and Dressler, are assassinated. Fowler and Nemerov announce new measures to counter nuclear proliferation in joint speeches at the White House, as Ryan and his fiancée Dr. Catherine Muller listen in. Spinnaker, who is revealed to be Grushkov, gives Catherine a present for their engagement, which they notably had not yet announced to anyone.

CAST

Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan

Morgan Freeman as William Cabot, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency

Bridget Moynahan as Cathy Mueller

James Cromwell as J. Robert Fowler, President of the United States

Liev Schreiber as John Clark

Michael Byrne as Anatoly Grushkov, senior advisor to President Nemerov.

Colm Feore as Olson

Alan Bates as Richard Dressler

Ron Rifkin as Sidney Owens, Secretary of State

Ciarán Hinds as Alexander Nemerov, President of the Russian Federation

Bruce McGill as Gene Revell, National Security Advisor

Richard Marner as President Zorkin, President of the Russian Federation prior to Nemerov

Philip Baker Hall as David Becker, Secretary of Defense

Josef Sommer as Senator Jessup

Ken Jenkins as Admiral Pollack

Philip Akin as General Wilkes

John Beasley as General Lasseter, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Lee Garlington as Mary Pat Foley, CIA

Joel Bissonnette as Mason, Dressler's American contact

Sven-Ole Thorsen as Haft, Dressler's hitman

Aleksandr Belyavsky as Admiral Ivanov

Lev Prygunov as General Saratkin

Yevgeni Lazarev as General Dubinin

Gregory Hlady as Milinov

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

based on Tom Clancy's 1991 novel of the same name.