Clancy's latest adds up to a summer hit

The Sum of All Fears -- PG-13
Starring: Ben Affleck, Morgan Freeman
Directed by: Phil Alden Robinson
Showing: Showplace West 12 Summertime doesn't arrive until Hollywood's decided to blow something up, and "The Sum of All Fears" has the bang to bring in the shorts, barbeques and humidity. "The Sum of All Fears" gets into the summer movie season on the heels of "Spider-Man" and "Attack of the Clones," and is the first big movie of summer that is not a sci-fi/fantasy flick. This is the fourth Tom Clancy novel to be adapted into a movie. The storyline follows that of the book except for changes in the age of the main characters and some of the locations. The movie deals with terrorist attacks on America and examines how they would be dealt with. It looks at the responses the government would have to consider and how it would implement them. The movie is a dream work for any hard-core weapons junkie and relies heavily on "summer movie" aesthetics: guns, effects and suspense without the character development and personal power plays that make the book entertaining. Throughout the movie I kept wondering how the filmmakers gained access to the Stealth fighter-bombers and the MiG 29s. There are several good performances. However, Ben Affleck's performance as Jack Ryan, an analyst for the CIA, is strong but is lacking compared to both Alec Baldwin's and Harrison Ford's portrayals of the character in the first three movies of the series. Morgan Freeman makes CIA director Bill Cabot come alive as the bedrock many other characters rely on in the darkest hours of the struggle, and John Clark, the CIA's problem solver in the Clancy's novels, is played to stone cold perfection by Liev Schreiber. He is a man not to be triffeld with -- a James Bond-type with a license to kill but without the martinis. Some of the scenes have problems with consistency and the film lacks the direction necessary to achieve the mood created in the book. But despite its minor problems, the movie doesn't disappoint as a big, action-packed summer flick. The events unfolding here take the audience to the brink of doomsday and back.