Oh dear, what a let-down. This movie left me with the feeling that two hours of my life had been stolen. OK, so this is Jack Ryan before Patriot Games (given that he's unmarried ... the movie is unclear on the time when it's set), so he has to be young, but Harrison Ford managed to portray Ryan as a nice guy, insecure but fundamentally smart, and Affleck just can't do it. He tries hard, but is handicapped [ironically] by his good looks and boyish smile. <br /><br />What is even worse is that the script does Affleck no favours. [SPOILER ALERT]. He makes a crucial phone call to someone who doesn't trust him and fails to put the key information in the first sentence? That's fundamentally stupid. He dashes around the world like a demented chicken rather than staying cool and making a few phone calls? And then there's the plot holes: John Clark can't or won't speak Russian? He doesn't seem to know that most Ukrainians understand Russian? Cathy gets knocked over - inside a hospital - by a nuclear blast, stays there for hours afterwards, and doesn't suffer any radiation after-effects in later books? Come on, this is well beyond belief. [END SPOILER ALERT].<br /><br />Clancy writes well, and deserves credit for coming closer than anyone else [SPOILER ALERT FOR POSSIBLE FUTURE MOVIE] to predicting September 11 in "Debt of Honor", which I read on a plane coming back from Japan :-( [END SPOILER ALERT], but watching this made me lose belief in Jack Ryan and therefore to lose interest in Clancy's books. I really am tempted to sell or donate all my Clancy novels and just keep "Every Man a Tiger" and "Into the Storm", where his ability to write military tactics combines with fact.<br /><br />Perhaps, though, "Sum of all Fears" is just a blip in Clancy's writing career. The following conversation took place in the men's restroom after the movie:<br /><br />Me: "That was bad". Him: "Yeah, and the air-conditioning was freezing". Me: "Wasn't there some woman character in the book who made things really difficult for Ryan? She was totally missing from the movie" Him: "Oh, you've read the book?" Me: "Well, I started it" Him: "Was it boring too?"<br /><br />QED.<br /><br />