The Sum of All Fears(2002)

Plot Summary

• In 1973, during the Yom Kippur War, an Israeli fighter loaded with a nuclear bomb is on a routine mission when it is tracked and shot down by Iranian SAM sites. The bomb survives the explosion and is lost in the Middle Eastern desert. With time, the bomb is lost among the sands of the desert. When the Russian President suddenly dies of a heart attack, the new Russian President Nemerov (Ciarán Hinds) is sworn in quickly. American intelligence believes him to be a hard-liner, but young CIA analyst Jack Ryan (Ben Affleck) doesn't think so.Ryan & his boss, Bill Cabot (Morgan Freeman), travel to Russia to meet the new President under the cover of inspecting disarmament at Russian nuclear sites. Nemerov is impressed that Jack knows Russian and wrote a paper on him 2 years ago, predicting him rising to power in Russia. Nemerov tells Cabot that Chechnya is Russia's internal matter and asks the US to stay away from it. relations between the U.S. and Russia are strained due to Russia's war in Chechnya. Cabot says that the U.S. worries about Nemerov's control over his military. 3 Russian scientists have mysteriously disappeared. Although the Russians have explanations for their absence, none of them are true.In Austria, a Neo-Fascist has developed a frightening plan to incite a war between Russia & the U.S. using an unexploded bomb from the deserts of the Middle East. A Syrian scrap collector uncovers a large, unexploded bomb buried in a field in the Golan Heights. He sells it to a South African black-market arms trafficker named Olson (Colm Feore), who recognizes it as the nuclear bomb that was lost during that war. He then sells it to a Neo-Nazi group led by Austrian billionaire Richard Dressler (Alan Bates) for $50 M. Dressler doesn't like the U.S. and Russia dictating the future of Europe and wants the world powers to face off, in order to shape a new world in the Nazi image.After receiving reliable intelligence from a confidential secure informant inside the Kremlin, code-named "Spinnaker", Cabot sends operative John Clark (Liev Schreiber) to Russia to investigate the missing scientists. Clark tracks the missing scientists to a former Soviet military facility in Ukraine, where Cabot suspects they are building a secret nuclear weapon that Russia could use without any method to trace it back to them; Cabot asks Jack to go and assist Clark. Jack & Clark find that a bomb has been completed & the scientists are dead.Meanwhile, tensions between the U.S. and Russia escalate as the Russian army uses Chemical weapons against Chechnya. Ryan argues to the U.S. security committee that Nemerov didn't order the attack. Nemerov goes on TV taking responsibility for the attack, but privately knows that the attack was carried out by a rogue Russian general.The bomb is on its way to the U.S.A. - in a cigarette machine! The bomb is placed in a football stadium where the U.S. President is in attendance. Ryan and his colleagues discern that a crate from the facility in Ukraine was flown to the Canary Islands, then sent to Baltimore on a cargo ship. Ryan alerts Bill Cabot, who gets the President out of the stadium quickly. Minutes later, the low-yield nuclear bomb explodes, killing several thousands of people. Cabot dies later in a makeshift field hospital. Before dying, Cabot gives Jack his phone, revealing his contact inside the Kremlin.From Air Force One, the President transmits messages to the Russian President, who denies that the Russians have placed the bomb on U.S. soil. But rogue members of the Russian Air Force are in on the sinister plan (in partnership with the Neo Nazi), attack a U.S. aircraft carrier. Nemerov denies this attack as well.In this atmosphere, Jack finds the bill of landing for the nuclear bomb shipped to the U.S. & traces it to the Baltimore docks. Ryan learns from a radiation assessment team that the isotopic signature from the nuclear blast indicates it was manufactured in the U.S. inside a plutonium reactor In 1968 (turns out each reactor has a very specific chemical and radioactive signature, making it easy to trace back to its origin), evidence which seems to exonerate Russia. In Syria, Clark tracks down Ghazi, one of the men who found the bomb, now dying of radiation exposure. He tells Clark that he sold the bomb to Olson, who lives in Damascus. Ryan's colleagues at Langley infiltrate Olson's computer and download files that implicate Dressler as the person who bought the plutonium and who is behind the nuclear attack. Ryan connects with Spinnaker and reveals the info gathered so far. Spinnaker reveals that the U.S. plutonium in question went to Israel.The U.S. president launches a conventional strike against Russian military targets. As Nemerov discusses the correct response, the U.S. President orders SNAPCOUNT, nuclear attack on Russia (taking out their subs, planes in the air, and known missiles in silos). Russians respond by readying their own missiles.Jack Ryan tries to convince the U.S. President, but he is in no mood to listen. He convinces the army to let him use a back-channel telex communicator with the Russians, which the Russians President Nemerov along with the U.S. team is monitoring. Jack details the conspiracy to get U.S. & Russia to war & say that he knows the attack did not originate from Russia. He asks Russia to back down without any guarantees from the U.S. President to follow suit. Jack is forcibly removed on orders from the U.S. President, but Russia responds by backing down. U.S. follows & world destruction is narrowly avoided.The participants in the conspiracy, including Olson and Dressler, are assassinated. Fowler and Nemerov announce new measures to counter nuclear proliferation in joint speeches at the White House, as Ryan and his fiance, Dr. Catherine Muller (Bridget Moynahan) listen in. Spinnaker, who is revealed to be Nemerov's Senior Advisor Grushkov (Michael Byrne), gives Catherine a modest gift for their engagement.

Storyline

• When the President of Russia suddenly dies, a man whose politics are virtually unknown succeeds him. This change in political leaders sparks paranoia among American CIA officials, so CIA Director Bill Cabot ( Morgan Freeman ) recruits young analyst Jack Ryan ( Ben Affleck ) to supply insight and advice on the situation. Then the unthinkable happens: a nuclear bomb explodes in a US city, and America is quick to blame the Russians. — Sujit R. Varma When the President of Russia dies, and his replaced by a man with a cryptic past, putting the United States on alert to rising Cold War fears. When the CIA suspects that renegade Russian scientists are attempting to develop more mobile nuclear weapons, East-West tensions overflow. CIA Director William Cabot ( Morgan Freeman ) sends his best agent, Jack Ryan ( Ben Affleck ) into action. What Ryan discovers is that terrorists are planning to provoke a war between the US and Russia, by detonating a nuclear bomb at a football game in Baltimore, Maryland. — SindyMac The United States is very critical of the Russians' treatment of Chechneya, that are ready to step in, but the new Russian President, who they believe is a hardliner, tells them that this is none of their concern. However, CIA analyst Jack Ryan, who did research on the man, doesn't think he is. But when the Russians continue to attack Chechneya, and the Russian President claims responsibility when in reality he is not, the Americans are ready to go against him. But what they don't know is that there is a third party who is trying to push them into war, which may happen when they detonate a nuclear bomb in the US and people in the Russian Military are in league with this third party and helping him push the two countries to war. But Ryan knows something's going on and is trying to find out what it is before it's too late. — rcs0411@yahoo.com