The Sum of All Fears (2002)

The film begins with a sequence inspired by the novel’s prologue set during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in which a single Israeli A-4 jet carrying a nuclear weapon is shot down over the Syrian desert. The bomb, over time, is consumed by the sand and disappears.
The film narrative then shifts forward 29 years and inside a secret government bunker in Mount Weather, Virginia, where President J. Robert Fowler (James Cromwell) and some of his senior national security advisors, including Central Intelligence Agency Director William Cabot (Morgan Freeman), are conducting a top-secret wargame, simulating a Russian nuclear attack against the United States.
In 2002, the bomb is found in Syria by a couple of scrap dealers and unwittingly sold to an arms dealer named Olson (Colm Feore), who in turn sells it to an Austrian neo-Nazi named Richard Dressler (Alan Bates) for 50 million dollars on the black market.
Meanwhile, the United States becomes concerned when Alexander Nemerov (Ciarán Hinds) becomes the new president of the Russian Federation. Nemerov is seen as a hard-liner with regard to his control over the Russian military. The Director of Central Intelligence seeks the opinion of CIA analyst Jack Ryan (Ben Affleck), who has done extensive research on Nemerov’s life and career. While on a routine inspection of Russia’s nuclear weapons facilities, Cabot and Ryan are invited to the Kremlin to meet with Nemerov personally. Tension arises when Nemerov likens the United States’ involvement in Russian-Chechen affairs to “sleeping with another man’s wife”, with Russia the betrayed and vengeful husband. Nonetheless, Nemerov appears to like Jack Ryan (Affleck) after Ryan compliments Nemerov in Russian.
During the inspection, Ryan notices that three senior Russian nuclear technicians are not present at the facility. Nemerov’s aide Anatoli Grushkov (Michael Byrne) attempts to assuage Ryan’s concerns by telling him that the three scientists are out sick, on vacation, and recently deceased, respectively. Cabot’s covert informant in Moscow, known by his codename ‘Spinnaker’, tells Cabot that Grushkov’s explanations are false, and that the whereabouts of the three scientists are truly unknown to the Russian government. Upon arrival in Washington, Cabot sends CIA operative John Clark (Liev Schreiber) to track down the missing scientists. Clark discovers the three scientists in Ukraine constructing Dressler’s bomb.
When President Nemerov takes responsibility for an unauthorized gas-warfare attack on Grozny, the capital city of Chechnya, President Fowler and his administration become concerned with the volatility of Nemerov’s military policies and respond by sending NATO peacekeeping troops to Chechnya. Jack Ryan correctly believes that Nemerov took responsibility for the act only to save face before the radicals in Russia, and loses credibility from the White House. Meanwhile, the nuclear bomb arrives in a crate in Baltimore, Maryland, and is placed at an American football stadium disguised as a cigarette vending machine.
In a recording, Dressler reveals his intentions in placing the bomb in Baltimore: frustrated and angered with the American and Russian paternalism over smaller European nations, Dressler has resolved to destroy both nations, much as Adolf Hitler desired to in World War II. Dressler notes that Hitler was “not crazy”, but “stupid” in that he tried to fight the Soviet Union and the United States simultaneously. Rather, one must get “America and Russia to fight each other… and destroy each other.” By detonating a nuclear weapon on American soil, Dressler hopes to aggravate an already tense relationship between the two superpowers to the point of full-blown nuclear war.
Ryan attempts to inform Cabot that the bomb is in Baltimore, but it turns out that President Fowler and Cabot are attending a football game in the stadium where the bomb is planted. The noise from the game makes it excessively difficult for Cabot to hear Ryan’s warning. After several tries, Ryan gets the warning across and Cabot orders the Secret Service agents to rush the President out of the stadium. The President manages to escape the stadium, but only moments before the bomb detonates, destroying a significant part of the city and scattering the President’s motorcade.
After the explosion, President Fowler is rescued by heliborne United States Marines, and taken airborne on a Boeing E-4B Advanced Airborne Command Post with his cabinet. Immediately, they fear that the bomb was Russian. Ryan’s girlfriend Dr. Catherine Muller (Bridget Moynahan) survives the blast and Ryan survives a helicopter crash, but Cabot dies later at a hospital.
After learning about the explosion, Dressler telephones a corrupt general in the Russian Air Force. In an attempt to further aggravate the situation, the general orders his Tu-22M Backfire pilots to strike an American aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis with standoff missiles in the North Sea under the false information that a U.S. ICBM has destroyed Moscow. The strike heavily damages the Stennis and renders the carrier unable to launch aircraft. In response, American President Fowler orders three or more United States Air Force F-16 fighter jets to attack the originating Russian air base. Tensions mount as trust between Fowler and Nemerov rapidly deteriorates. To prove that he is willing to take the exchange to the next level, Fowler orders SNAPCOUNT, the military to maximum readiness, preparing to launch a massive nuclear strike on Russian military targets. Seeing that the U.S. has dispatched B-2 Spirit stealth bombers and nuclear submarines, Nemerov prepares to launch his ICBMs on the United States.
Ryan first learns about the origin of the bomb after the Army Radiation Assessment Team conducts an isotopic fingerprint analysis of air samples around ground zero. It is concluded that the plutonium for the Baltimore bomb was manufactured in Savannah River nuclear plant in South Carolina in 1968, thus indicating that the original fissile material was of American, not Russian, origin. He tries, unsuccessfully, to communicate this information to President Fowler. After being with the dying William Cabot, Ryan takes Cabot’s personal effects, and with Cabot’s text messenger, asks Spinnaker how the American plutonium ended up in a Russian bomb. Spinnaker tells him that the United States had secretly managed to send it to Israel for their nuclear weapons program. Meanwhile, John Clark learns from Ghazi, one of the scrap dealers who is dying from being exposed to the bomb’s radiation, that it was Olson who bought the bomb and that he lives in Damascus. Ryan’s co-workers in the CIA infiltrate Olson’s computer and download files that implicate Dressler, as the person who bought the plutonium and who is behind the Baltimore attack. Ryan learns of this from his team.
Ryan gets to the Baltimore harbor docks, only to find Dressler’s American contact Lod Mason murdered by Dressler’s German hitman Haft. Haft attacks Ryan, but Ryan manages to get the upper hand on him. Ryan tries to force Haft to talk, but is thwarted as the Maryland State Police arrive. Via a Maryland State Police helicopter, Ryan manages to get to The Pentagon, where he is able to communicate the truth to President Nemerov. Relying on Ryan’s word, Nemerov proposes a plan to Fowler to a stand down. Fowler follows suit, and nuclear war is averted.
The two presidents meet and make peace as agents of both governments hunt down and assassinate the terrorist conspirators. John Clark slits Olson’s throat, Russian agents pursue and shoot the traitorous General Dubinin in a snow-covered forest, and as Grushkov looks on, a carefully-placed car bomb kills Dressler after he replaces his bodyguard and pushes in the cigarette lighter, triggering the bomb.
In Washington, D.C. Presidents Fowler and Nemerov address the Baltimore tragedy and the future of weapons of mass destruction during a speech on the White House lawn. In a nearby park, Ryan and Cathy Muller are having a picnic when they are approached by Grushkov. It is revealed that Grushkov is Spinnaker: Cabot’s covert source in Moscow. Grushkov gives Dr. Muller a “modest gift” for her engagement to Ryan. Muller and Ryan are perplexed, as they have not told anyone of their engagement. Ryan asks Grushkov how he could possibly know this secret, but he simply smiles, shrugs and walks away.

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