Zero Sum Game

by Ed Owens

When I was younger, I wanted to be a spy. With James Bond as a role model, who wouldn't? If Bond wasn't kicking ass, both foreign and domestic, he was bedding it, all with a wry smirk and a dry martini. Bond was the only spy who never broke a sweat until the last reel, and even then only because of the heat from the massive fireball which inevitably resulted from destroying a vast underground lair.

If you ask me which Bond I'm talking about, I'm going to have to slap you.

But as the world changed, so did Bond. The secret agent man who started off brutal yet charismatic (as originally embodied by Sean "the Bond who would be king" Connery) gave way to a tongue-in-cheek dandy (Roger "it'll be a stretch after The Saint" Moore) after a brief but remarkably miscalculated appearance by George "Guess what's up my kilt" Lazenby. Moore's later efforts skirted dangerously close to self-parody, necessitating the introduction of a new line: Blue-Collar Bond.

No, the latest Bond wasn't a Pittsburgh steel worker, but Timothy "no more whip duels on floating platforms" Dalton was as down-to-earth as the previous Bonds had been mythic: smaller villains, fewer gadgets, and a disastrous run-in with monogamy sent the franchise careening off the rails and dangerously close to the brink of the very disaster Bond had spent so much of his life preventing. And the brink is where Pierce "Steele worker" Brosnan has kept it, a Bond whose hair is never out of place in the new world order, where the Red Menace isn't that menacing and Bond himself plays Moneypenny to a female M.

Thank god for Spy vs. Spy.

Obviously, Bond's seemingly permanent vacation has not gone unnoticed by rival studios. The past two weeks has seen the release of 3 1/2 big budget spy films, hoping to kill time while Bond's rapidly dwindling fanbase awaits the November release of Pretty Boy Brosnan's latest effort. Jack Ryan was initially seen as a tentpole franchise for the ailing Paramount--bestselling novels, recurring character, blockbuster first film. But each succesive entry has returned less than stellar box office, leading Paramount to shuffle the cards, roll the dice, and stake everything on The Sum of All Fears - a particularly apt title given that a dead box office means a dead franchise. If all else failed, they would at least have Tomb Raider to fall back on.

This time out, Ryan is hot on the trail of a nuclear bomb in the hands of a neo-Nazi terrorist planning to trick the U.S. and Russia into wiping each other out so he can pick up the pieces. To do this, he must set off the bomb on U.S. soil, making it appear as if Russia were somehow behind it.

Let the games begin.

The problem is that these games aren't very interesting. While the potential threat of a nuclear attack on American soil is particularly rife with its own inherent tensions, director Phil Alden Robinson does alarmingly little to actually generate any amount of tension within the film itself (something you would think his previous work on Field of Dreams would have prepared him for). The film floats from one scene to the next without building to anything, and several scenes are about as useless as the Customer Service counter at Best Buy (a scene of Ryan and crew driving to inspect a Russian facility establishes that the agents have a list of the personnel that are supposed to be on-duty and that Morgan Freeman looks silly in a Russian military "Ushanka" hat - both of which are reiterated in the following scene).

In a sense, the film proves to be its own worst enemy, at least as far as the first hour goes. The trailer for the film showcases shots of the eventual blast, meaning that the question is not if the bomb will explode, but when. The first half becomes little more than a formality, as Ryan, et al., frantically circle the globe trying to stop the emerging plot, and the deliberate pacing, rather than heightening our anxiety, only drags out the process.

And that's the good half.

The second half is a shrill Cold War throwback that pits the rival leaders in an escalating series of miscommunications that threatens to end in an all out nuclear war while Ryan wanders around screaming into a cell phone. The neo-Nazi all but disappears while the film piles one absurd contrivance upon another, assuming that flashing lights (especially little red buttons), swish pans, and lots of yelling will overcome the crushing sense of deja vu. It doesn't.

Aside from the troubling chronological questions raised by having the younger Ben Affleck take over for the aging Harrison Ford (many of which would be more appropriate for a time-travel film than a political thriller), the switch is less jarring to fans of the series than it might have been, assuming you're not a very observant fan. Affleck does well enough throughout, especially given that none of the (completely unnecessary) scenes with love interest Bridget Moynahan feature animal crackers. Freeman does what he does most, at least lately, and bleeds aged wisdom from every pore. Neither can save the film from reaching the limits of its invention well before we've passed the point of no refund.

©2002 Ed Owens
CineScene