The Sum of All Fears (film) - Plot

Plot

During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel deploys an A-4 Skyhawk carrying a nuclear weapon, to use in the event that the country is overrun by the invading Arab armies. The plane is shot down over the Syrian desert, where the bomb is buried by the sand and lost.

Twenty-nine years later, U.S. President J. Robert Fowler (James Cromwell) and his senior national security advisors, including CIA Director William Cabot (Morgan Freeman), are conducting a top-secret military simulation of a Russian nuclear attack against the United States. Meanwhile, the Israeli bomb is found in Syria by a couple of scrap dealers and unwittingly sold to a South African arms dealer named Olson (Colm Feore) for US$400. Olson in turn sells it for US$50 million to an Austrian businessman named Richard Dressler (Alan Bates), who leads a secretive group of wealthy European neo-Nazis, fascists, and white nationalists.

The U.S. becomes concerned when Aleksandr Nemerov (Ciarán Hinds), a supposed hardliner, becomes the new President of Russia. Cabot seeks the opinion of CIA analyst Jack Ryan (Affleck), who has done extensive research on Nemerov's life and career. During a routine inspection of Russia's nuclear weapons facilities, Cabot and Ryan are invited to the Kremlin to meet with Nemerov personally. Nemerov expresses impatience with the Fowler administration over what he perceives as meddling in Russian internal affairs, specifically the war in Chechnya. Nonetheless, Nemerov and Ryan develop a rapport.

During the inspection, Ryan notices that three Russian nuclear technicians are not present at the facility. Nemerov's aide, Anatoli Grushkov (Michael Byrne), a former KGB assassin, claims that there is nothing amiss. However, Cabot's covert informant in Moscow, "Spinnaker," says that the Russian government does not know where they are. Upon returning to Washington, Cabot sends operative John Clark (Liev Schreiber) to track down the missing scientists. Clark finds them dead in Ukraine, where they had constructed Dressler's bomb using the plutonium from the Israeli weapon.

When President Nemerov takes responsibility for an unauthorized chemical attack on Grozny, President Fowler becomes concerned with the volatility of Nemerov's military policies and responds by sending peacekeeping troops to Chechnya. Ryan correctly believes that the attack was carried out by rogue elements of the Russian military against Nemerov's orders, and that he only took responsibility so as not to appear weak. Meanwhile, the nuclear bomb, disguised as a cigarette vending machine, arrives in a crate in Baltimore and is placed in a football stadium.

In a recording, Dressler shares his ideology: as revenge for defeating Nazi Germany and partitioning Europe during the Cold War, Dressler intends to destroy both the U.S. and Russia. He notes that Hitler was "stupid" for trying to fight both of them, whereas he intends to pit them against one another. By detonating a nuclear weapon in the U.S., Dressler and his associates plan to aggravate an already tense relationship between the two nations to the point of full-blown nuclear war.

Ryan informs Cabot about the bomb, but learns that both he and President Fowler are attending a football game in the stadium where the bomb is planted. Cabot orders 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 U.S. Marines, and taken airborne on a Boeing E-4B Advanced Airborne Command Post with his cabinet. Immediately, they fear that the bomb was Russian.

After being informed about the explosion, Dressler telephones one of his associates, a corrupt general in the Russian Air Force. In order to further aggravate the situation, the general orders his Tu-22M Backfire pilots to strike the USS John C. Stennis in the North Sea with standoff missiles under the ruse that Moscow had been hit by an American ICBM. In response, President Fowler orders U.S. Air Force F-16 fighter jets to attack the Russian air base. Tensions escalate 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 alert level for maximum readiness, preparing to launch a massive nuclear strike on Russian military targets. Seeing that the U.S. has dispatched B-2 stealth bombers and Ohio-class submarines, Nemerov prepares to launch his ICBMs on the United States.

Ryan first learns about the origin of the bomb after a U.S. Army Radiation Assessment Team conducts an isotopic fingerprint analysis of air samples around ground zero in Baltimore. It is concluded that the plutonium for the Baltimore bomb was manufactured at the 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. Ryan finds Cabot in a field hospital, dying of the wounds he suffered when the President's motorcade was wrecked. Ryan takes Cabot's personal effects and, with Cabot's text messenger, asks Spinnaker how someone could have obtained the American plutonium. Spinnaker tells him that the U.S. had secretly given it to Israel for their nuclear weapons program. Meanwhile, John Clark learns from Ghazi, one of the scrap dealers who is now 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 colleagues at Langley 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 gets to the Baltimore harbor docks, only to find Dressler's American contact Jared Mason (Joel Bissonnette) murdered by Dressler's German hitman Haft (Sven-Ole Thorsen). 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 Baltimore police arrive.

Ryan goes to the Pentagon in hopes of contacting the President, but is unable to do so, and instead contacts President Nemerov. Ryan pleads with Nemerov to stop his offensive strike against the U.S. as a sign of good faith, with President Fowler listening in on the conversation. Grushkov persuades Nemerov to do this against the advice of the Russian military leaders. Only seconds before the U.S. launches its missiles, Fowler follows suit, averting a full scale nuclear war. Ryan finds his girlfriend, Dr. Catherine Muller (Bridget Moynahan), who he feared had been killed by the bomb, as the hospital where she worked was near the stadium.

John Clark slips into Olson's residence and cuts his throat, and Russian agents pursue and shoot the traitorous General Dubinin in a snow-covered forest. Dressler, aware that he is targeted as well, has his aide start his car engine to rule out a car bomb. As Grushkov looks on, Dressler is subsequently incinerated moments after he takes the wheel; the bomb was wired to the cigarette lighter instead of the ignition.

In Washington, Fowler and Nemerov announce new arms control and anti-proliferation agreements during a joint speech on the White House lawn. In a nearby park, Ryan and Muller are having a picnic when they are approached by Grushkov. It is revealed that Grushkov is Spinnaker, Cabot's covert source in the Kremlin. Grushkov says he will miss talking with Cabot but says that perhaps he and Ryan can talk, Ryan agrees. Grushkov gives Muller a "modest gift" for her engagement to Ryan. Muller and Ryan are perplexed, as they had not yet told anyone of their engagement. Ryan asks Grushkov how he could possibly know this secret, but he simply smiles, shrugs and walks away.