The Sum Of All Fears

By TIM WATKIN

(Herald rating: * * )

Jack Ryan is back in another Tom Clancy-penned film with a catch-all title (see Clear and Present Danger, Patriot Games). Only this time it's a different Jack Ryan - younger and Ben Affleck. Having watched Alec Baldwin and then Harrison Ford play the character as he rises through the ranks of the CIA, we now cut back to the days when Ryan has just started out in the CIA and met the woman who will later become his wife.

The problem is that while older Ryan fought 1990s-style central American and Irish terrorists, younger Ryan is taking on neo-Nazi terrorists in 2002. So the first layer of disbelief you have to strip off in watching this film is any sense of real time.

It's the first of many. You also have to accept that the young hero has had time to earn his PhD, learn multiple languages, could meet and immediately bond with the Russian president and waltz around Baltimore after a terrorist attack as if it was a slightly busy holiday weekend.

You also have to accept that this junior pen-pusher will be at the heart of every important meeting and every piece of action that threatens the end of the world.

Affleck lacks the ability to pull this off. Baldwin had a smooth intensity and Ford his famous screen presence - Affleck's just not hard enough. He comes across like James Bond's wussier American cousin. Despite being everywhere, he's strangely anonymous as the film spends a lot of time on the other central characters.

Freeman's canny CIA chief and Hinds' noble Russian president impress, but the American president (Cromwell) and his aides are poorly handled.

The plot pivots on the rediscovery of a nuclear bomb lost in the 1973 Israel-Arab war. It falls into the hands of neo-Nazis (not Arabs as in the book), who use it against America hoping to provoke nuclear war with Russia. What the story never explains is how destroying life on earth will help the Nazi cause.

While it clips along at first, building tension as it goes, the plot sadly gets both ridiculous and grim when the terrorists attack, just as the effects and film-making start to get interesting.

Americans will read all kinds of post-September 11 overtones into this and the subject-matter certainly plays on their feelings of fragility. But viewed simply as part of the Jack Ryan series, I'm afraid Fears is the worst.

Cast: Ben Affleck, Morgan Freeman, James Cromwell, Liev Schreiber

Director: Phil Alden Robinson

Rating: M (violence, offensive language)

Running time: 127 mins

Screening: Village, Hoyts, Berkeley cinemas