October 7 -The Sum of All Fears

Today’s film is an espionage movie with a scene that happens on October 7. Watch it tonight and enjoy.

THE SUM OF ALL FEARS                

On October 7, 1973 [00:36 to 4:01] an Israeli aircraft carrying a nuclear bomb is shot down over the Golan heights. The bomb is buried by a sandstorm. In 2002, the bomb is found and sold to Olson, a South African scrap metal dealer, who in turn sells it to a neo-Nazi group led by Dressler. Nemerov becomes Russian president.  Jack Ryan, a CIA analyst goes with CIA director Cabot to Moscow, but Ryan’s  girlfriend who had been given his cover story of being a historian doesn’t believe his story of why he missed their date. Ryan and Cabot discover three Russian nuclear scientists are missing.  Cabot’s source inside the Kremlin says the Russians don’t know where they are.  Two renegade Russian generals launch a chemical weapons attack in Chechnya. Nemerov takes responsibility for this publicly because as he says privately it is better for him to seem guilty, rather than weak and unable to contol his own army.  John Clark, a CIA agent  infiltrates the lab where the three missing Russians scientist had been working to build a nuclear bomb and finds them all murdered and the lab empty. The bomb has been sent to Baltimore and planted in the football stadium there. Dressler’s plan is to start a nuclear war between the USA and Russia, allowing the neo-Nazis to seize power in Europe. Cabot and the President are attending a football game in that stadium. But a after a warning call from Ryan, they both get out. The nuclear bomb goes off.  After a neo-Nazi mole inside the Russian air force orders an attack on a US aircraft carrier, President Fowler and his aides are convinced that Russia was behind the bomb. Fowler orders a retaliatory strike on a Russian airbase. Nemerov and Fowler prepare to launch a full scale nuclear strike on the other. Ryan tracks the source of the bomb to plutonium that the USA secretly gave Israel. He is able to use the hotline to tell this fact to Nemerov and asks him to order Russian forces to stand down. Against the advice of his advisors Nemerov does. Fowler then orders US forces to stand down also. Olson and Dressler are assassinated. Nemerov and Fowler sign a new arms control treaty and Jack and Catherine become engaged.

Not the best adaptation of a Clancy novel. It seems to move at a rather ponderous pace at times. It does have excellent special effects.

The Encyclopedia of Military History from 3500 b.c. to the Present by R. Ernest Dupuy & Trevor N. Dupuy (Harper & Row, NY, 1977) p. 1235 gives day war started

Screenplay - Paul Attanasio and Daniel Pyne

Producer - Mace Neufeld                    

Director - Phil Alden Robinson

Runtime – 3 hours 4 minutes

Released – May 31, 2002

Starring –

Ben Affleck as Jack Ryan

Morgan Freeman as William Cabot

Bridget Moynahan as Dr. Catherine Muller

James Cromwell as J. Robert Fowler

Liev Schreiber as John Clark

Michael Byrne as Anatoly Grushkov

Colm Feore as Olson

Alan Bates as Richard Dressler

Ron Rifkin as Sidney Owens

Copyright by Ivan Walters in 2014.