The Sum of All Fears

My husband is usually the one that picks the movies we watch, so on Netflix last week we watched The Sum of All Fears.

It is an action/political thriller movie about a nuclear bomb and attacks on the US from Russia.  Basically, the US originally tried to bomb a place in the Middle East back in the 1970s, but the plane carrying it got shot down, and the bomb was never detonated.  30 years later someone discovers it, then sells it to an Austrian neo-nazi who bombs the US with it.  His goal was to have the US think that Russia bombed them, so then that would start a war between Russia and the US.  However, with the smart thinking of CIA analyst Jack Ryan, the US concludes that Russia didn't plant and detonate the bomb, and therefore eliminating the need for war between them.  And, as typical of most movies, the bad guy is killed at the end.

I felt like the movie did a good job portraying that not everyone in the world is out to get you.  The US thought their "friends", the Russians, did something horrible to them, but it was just a giant misunderstanding.  We can learn from this that we need to get all of the facts straight before we can judge someone or punish them.  This reminded me of the West Wing a little bit because the President was having to make decisions fairly quickly with deciding to attack or not.  I know that this movie had a negative affect on me because I had a nightmare that night after watching it.  However, I do think of other countries in higher light now, and know that not everyone is bad or trying to hurt us.  So, basically it did a good job at trying to eliminate the Bad World Syndrome that we might have.