Sum of All Fears, The (Blu-ray)

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I can sit down and watch "The Sum of All Fears" every great once in a while. I absolutely love the casting of Liev Schreiber in the film and would love to see a spin-off from the series featuring him as John Clark. The guy is easily one of the most underappreciated actors in Hollywood. Morgan Freeman adds some respectability to the lackluster film. With Freeman and Schreiber in tow, "The Sum of All Fears" isn´t all bad as they provide some redeeming elements. The second half of the film is far more entertaining than the first as far as storytelling goes. This film is nowhere near as exciting as the other three Jack Ryan films and Ben Affleck was more of a poser than the authentic article of being an action movie star. I´m sure there is still life in the Jack Ryan franchise, but this was a definite misstep for Tom Clancy´s main character.

Video:

"The Sum of All Fears" is the most recent of the four Jack Ryan films and looks the best of any of them on Blu-ray. Mastered with the AVC MPEG-4 codec, the film is shown in 2.35:1 widescreen. Detail is strong with "The Sum of All Fears" and the hues are nicely saturated with natural looking flesh tones. Detail shows the young attractive faces of Ben Affleck and Bridget Moynahan and some of the interior Russian locations such as the Kremlin look outstanding. This was the first movie to be shot within the Kremlin and Blu-ray does the iconic building justice. The overhead satellite images that were used to introduce each location were also heavily detailed. Tom Clancy joked during a commentary that he could see his house and while that wasn´t possible, the detail of these images was outstanding. Another scene that stood out well was the Russian nuclear bomb disposal plant.

While I don´t feel that "The Sum of All Fears" is as visual as any of the other Jack Ryan films, this is perhaps the cleanest looking. Being only a half-dozen years old, the film does not have the thin veil of film grain that is apparent on the three older movies. The darker scenes look far nicer in this film and the moments with Clark and Ryan look very good. However, there are a lot of ´dusty´ scenes in the film where detail and coloring are lost. The filmmakers seemed to like darker locations and there aren´t as many sunny locations as there were in either of the two Harrison Ford movies. The print used was quite pristine and the film doesn´t suffer from any digital flaws or over processing that marred the earlier pictures. This is a solid looking catalog title.

Audio:

Audio is provided for "The Sum of All Fears" with a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio mix. Accompanying French and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 surround mixes are included for non-English speaking folk and subtitles are provided for English, English SDH, French, Spanish and Portuguese. "The Sum of All Fears" is the cleanest sounding of the Jack Ryan films, but it lacks action-filled scenes to make the TrueHD mix feel worthwhile. Aside from the nuclear explosion of Baltimore which possesses the most sound in the film, "The Sum of All Fears" doesn´t feel too lively in the sound department. There are some military strikes later in the movie, but neither the .1 LFE channel or the rear surrounds get a lot of action when the action heats up on-screen. There are some decent ambient effects found in the rear speakers and this is most apparent during the football game. Imaging is solid across channels as well as sounds move fluently from one speaker to another. Dialogue is clean. In general, the sound is good, but not spectacular.

Extras:

A number of features have been included on the Blu-ray release of "The Sum of All Fears" that were listed on the previous HD-DVD version of the film, but never included. Two commentary tracks begin the slate of bonus materials. The first Commentary by Director Phil Alden Robinson and Cinematographer John Lindley is a technical themed commentary that looks at the actual making of the film and what went into filming the various shots. Admittedly, I only scanned this commentary because I wanted to spend my time with the Commentary by Director Phil Alden Robinson and Novelist Tom Clancy. Clancy begins his introduction by stating that Robison ignored his novel. That was a perfect tease for the content of the commentary. Clancy spent most of the time pointing out the poorly made choices in straying from his novel and all of the inaccuracies in the film. I´m not sure of what Robinson was expecting with this commentary, but after listening to it you get the impression that nothing was done right by Robinson.

Three other features are included after the two commentaries. The Making of The Sum of All Fears (29:55) is broken down into two parts: "A Cautionary Tale: Casting" and "A Cautionary Tale: Production." Ben Affleck, Phil Alden Robinson and others lend their times and they discuss how the project changed after Harrison Ford decided against a third film and how they decided to re-start the story of Jack Ryan. This isn´t a bad making of documentary and easily the best such item in any of the Jack Ryan films. The second featurette, Creating Reality: The Visual Effects of The Sum of All Fears (27:48) looks at five scenes in the film, "Carrier Attack," "A-4," "Hospital," "Motorcade" and "Helicopter" and how each of them were made. I enjoyed hearing the special effects people talk about their work. It was interesting. Finally, the Theatrical Trailer is shown in high definition and is the only HD supplement on the disc.

Closing:

After "Pearl Harbor," Ben Affleck was given the role of Jack Ryan and Paramount had hoped his rising star could re-invigorate the series after Harrison Ford had given up the reins. Unfortunately, director Phil Alden Robinson and his team of screenwriters strayed too far from the Clancy formula and Affleck phoned in his performance in what is the least compelling Jack Ryan film. It should have been more and this started the tremendous downturn in Affleck´s career. The Blu-ray release features good sight and sound and the best supplements for any of the four Jack Ryan pictures. The Tom Clancy commentary is worth listening to simply to figure out why this film didn´t succeed in huge returns for Paramount. I certainly had hoped for more for "Sum of All Fears" and continue to be disappointed with it six years later.

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