Starring: Ben Affleck, Morgan Freeman, Bridget Moynihan, Liev Schreiber, James Cromwell, Ciaran Hinds, Colm Feore, Philip Baker Hall, Bruce McGill, Ron Rifkin
Directed By: Phil Alden Robinson

Man, I can’t believe this film is 13 years old. It was released less than a year after 9/11, and tapped into America’s fear of terrorist attacks. This was not my first time viewing The Sum Of All Fears, but I can say that the film didn’t hold up for me as well as I had remembered.

First of all, Ben Affleck really has come a long way in terms of his acting abilities. Not that he’s awful here, but I could tell we had a noticeable step back in quality from his Argo and Gone Girl days. He has two emotions, smug and loud. He’s either smug, or he’s loud. There isn’t really an in between. Morgan Freeman delivers the exact same performance that Morgan Freeman delivers when he wants to “phone it in”, from films like Chain Reaction to Hard Rain and The Sum Of All Fears, he’s got a standard level of acting that he gives for films that aren’t worth his full effort. Sad thing is, his 90% is still better than most actors 110%.

Bridget Moynihan is the throwaway rising star actress given a little something to do. I remember when she was “the next big thing” and how that fizzled out. She did The Sum Of All Fears, The Recruit, and I Robot, and then basically vanished. Her next four films were flops, then she wound up on TV, and now she’s a regular on Blue Bloods. She’s OK here, but nothing special.

Overall, I was a little bored the second time around. The plot felt silly, stumbling upon a nuke in the desert, and buying it for like 400 dollars. Really? And no wonder the Russians hate us, they’re always the bad guys in our movies. Even when we’re at peace with them, someone is still making a movie about how the Russians are about to fuck us over. 12 years later, and Jack Ryan would face off against another Russian in Shadow Recruit. What’s Jack Ryan’s beef with Russia?

Anyway, in trying to balance how I felt on a repeat viewing versus how I felt the first time, and I’ve come up with my grade. It’s not worth a repeat viewing, but if you’ve never seen it before, it’s also not the worst thing you could be watching. For whatever reason, the director of this film would stop directing for twelve years, until he came back with the dreadful The Angriest Man In Brooklyn. Did I mention this was the guy who made Field Of Dreams? What an awful career trajectory.

FINAL GRADE: B-