Factual error: A force of Russian Tu-22 Backfire bombers attacks the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74) by sneaking in under the ship's radar. This is all well and good except that carriers usually don't use their own radar, they have Airborne Early Warning aircraft (E-2 Hawkeye's) that can see much further and not give away the carrier's position (let alone the F-14s which would be patrolling too) not to mention the fleet of destroyers other ships guarding the carrier. The whole point is, the US Navy practiced and planned for such a "carrier versus Backfire" battle for years. I guess in the interest of furthering the plot Hollywood has to ignore the immense measures the USN takes to protect those multi-billion dollar assets, not to mention the 5000+ sailors that man them.
The Sum of All Fears (2002)
Directed by: Phil Alden Robinson
Starring: Morgan Freeman, Ben Affleck, Liev Schreiber, James Cromwell, Philip Baker Hall, Alan Bates, Ken Jenkins, Ian Mongrain, Russell Bobbitt
Continuity mistake: In the aircraft scenes after the blast in Baltimore, watch the clocks closely. The times go forward, backward, and everything in between.
Revealing mistake: In the scene where Jack Ryan uses the radio after the helicopter crash, the film is reversed - the word frequency appears as a mirror image.
Trivia: Ben Affleck is the third actor to play Jack Ryan. His predecessors are Harrison Ford (Clear & Present Danger, Patriot Games) and Alec Baldwin (The Hunt for Red October).
Trivia: When Bill Cabot meets John Clark at the airport in the rain, it was Liev Schreiber's idea to have Clark waiting without an umbrella.
Trivia: The SuperBowl game was filmed in Montreal, Quebec in Canada and the two teams are the Montreal Alouettes and Toronto Argonauts of The Canadian Football League. They just put them in different uniforms to film them.
Jack Ryan: General, the President is basing his decisions on some really bad information right now. And if you shut me out, your family, and my family, and twenty-five million other families will be dead in thirty minutes.
President Fowler: Order the planes to stand down, take us to DEFCON-3... and will somebody ask Mr. Ryan if I can use the phone now?
President Fowler: We gotta update these fire drills, Billy. I mean, if the shit ever hits the fan, I'm not going underground. This place is a goddamn tomb down there.
Bill Cabot: We've also gotta choose someone else to face off against besides the Russians all the time.
President Fowler: Really? Let's see. Who else has 27,000 nukes for us to worry about?
Bill Cabot: It's the guy with one I'm worried about.
Question: As President Fowler is being escorted from the football stadium, he tells Cabot to "get the people out of here." How did the President know that the bomb was in the building? No one in the scene knew its exact location, so why does he think that if the fans leave the stadium they will be safe?
Question: Now i don't know much about missiles and such, but in the scene where the Israeli fighter jet is carrying the nuclear warhead, and is then shot down, well wouldn't the bomb blast that destroyed the plane also detonate the nuke attached as well? correct if i am wrong.
Answer: Nope. A nuclear detonation requires a highly specific sequence of events to occur within the bomb - an explosion nearby wouldn't come close to producing those conditions. The construction of a nuclear bomb requires components to be placed in a highly specific configuration - damage to the bomb would disrupt that configuration and make it effectively impossible for the bomb to go off.
Question: What is the music playing/who is it by when Clark slits the South African guys throat near the end of the movie?
Answer: The song is the classic "Nessun dorma", composed by Puccini and sung (in this version) by Bruce Sledge.
Join the mailing list
Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.
Answer: The President telling Cabot to "get the people out of here" is just a political life boat. If asked what he did when he found out about the bomb he can "honestly" say he asked for an evacuation.
It's unlikely at such a time of panic that one would consider a 'political life boat'. There's also nothing in the character as presented to suggest that would be his thought process. The president's just been told that there's a bomb in Baltimore (not the building) and says "get those people out of the stadium." He's being evacuated from a location that contains thousands of other people. It's fair to assume he knows all those people are also in danger so wants them evacuated too.