A fascist terrorist group steals a nuke and tries to con Russia and the US into battling it out against one another. Armed with his deep knowledge of the new Russian prez and his boss' Palm Pilot, CIA historian Jack Ryan (Affleck) attempts to get the leaders of both nations to let cooler heads prevail while trying to keep me awake. He fails at one and succeeds in the other... and not particularly in that order...

This movie was slow, slow, slow and if I was a better critic, I'd probably come up with a snappy line like "Sum of all Bombs" or something, but frankly, after sitting in front of this movie for over two hours, I'm really not in the mood to start thinking about witty things to write. This film biggest fault is its lackluster pace, especially through its first half. About 20 minutes in, I started checking the DVD player's timer and wondering whether or not I should take it in for repair since it was obviously moving very slowly but low and behold, it wasn't: the film was just boring. There's nothing really new here. It's just like if they had taken some clips from a hundred other movies that had been made over the last little while (and not necessarily the best parts) and tossed them into a celluloid salad. Missing nukes? Seen it before. Someone trying to get the USA and the former USSR to duke it out? Seen it before. Crazy terrorists who want to take down Washington? I wish I had only ever seen this in the movies, but like I said before, nothing new here. I also have a little personal beef with this movie: if I see one more flick that segues from scene to scene using an overhead satellite view of the city, I swear...there's gonna be trouble!

It's fitting though that they would get Affleck to succeed Harrison Ford in the role of Jack Ryan since they're both as inexpressive, wooden and boring as the another. Affleck basically coasts through this sucker with his one facial expression and I for one didn't really care about either his character, his romance with the yummy Bridget Moynahan or his knowledge of the Russian language. Morgan Freeman cashed in a paycheck as well, not even needing to warm up to play CIA director William Cabot. Same goes for James Cromwell who punched in as the President. The only really fun character was Liev Schreiber's. He played some sort of creepy CIA covert agent who goes around sneaking into forbidden buildings and taking care of people who need to "disappear". He played it really low key, but it worked pretty well and his character is the kind of guy you want to picture when thinking about these weird things that no one ever really knows about like the world of international espionage.

The film did have some redeeming qualities though. No matter how many times you see it, it's always pretty cool to hear the president say "go to def-con 4 and notify the Chiefs of Staff!" or the likes and some of the sequences showing military movements were pretty impressive what with the B2`s soaring and missiles getting all warmed up. As well, Jerry Goldsmith provided another pretty decent score, although some parts were carbon copied from his earlier work in THE 13TH WARRIOR. But despite all that, the film still needed a bit more movement and a lot less time.

Video: Excellent looking and presented in a nice widescreen version enhanced for 16x9 TV's. The film didn't really do it for me but it did look fantastic and some of the special effects sequences were really well accomplished. The colors are vibrant and the definition is excellent with no dirt on it at all.

Audio: The English track is delivered in 5.1 Dolby Surround or in 2.0 Dolby Surround. Again, the sound is fantastic and some sequences will blow you away but they're unfortunately few and far between. There's also a French language dubbing available in 2.0 Surround.

The offerings begin with two full length audio commentaries, the first of which is hosted by director Phil Alden Anderson and cinematographer John Lindley. Having written and directed FIELD OF DREAMS which is right up there for me, I don't really want to tear the guy too much of a new one over this film, but I have to say that he doesn't really sound like a very exciting guy through this track. He and Lindley stay pretty technical on this one and you'll get a lot of "this was during the second day of shooting..." and "here we used this type of lens..." and the likes. Not really my thing and they don't really get into any type of story discussion whatsoever. The second track is a little more engaging. It once again features director Anderson, this time with novelist Tom Clancy. This time around, they do get in some story talk and Clancy adds a bit of excitement and a couple of jokes to the track. Nothing out of this world, but okay nonetheless.

Next up, you'll be treated to 30 minutes of "making of" stuff in a feature called "A cautioning tale", split into two sections about casting and production. It's fairly standard issue. The casting talk mostly discusses the choice of Affleck to succeed Harrison Ford while the production has a lot of talk about the various locations. One part that had me laughing was when all of the cast and crew started talking about how miserable they were in Montreal in the dead of winter. What a bunch of wusses! What's the big deal with 25 below? (Celsius) That's about the time of year that I start wearing a sweater!

My favorite feature on this was the visual effect featurette. The film does feature some pretty exciting action and some stunning sequences, mostly of stuff blowing up. Five specific sequences are shown here along with all the info on how they were made using mixes of miniature models and some CGI. At a little below an hour's length, there's enough to keep you busy for a while. The theatrical trailer is also included.

This film had some promise, but just didn't cut it for me with its main fault being its snoozer of a first half. It's not a total waste of time, but if you want tension or international espionage, there are about a billion other solid choices out there that'll entertain you a lot more than this.