THE SUM OF ALL FEARS

Ben Affleck smartly takes over the role of CIA analyst Jack Ryan in The Sum of All Fears, a world-detonation thriller that is at once urgent and lazy — benefiting from its connection to current events and also, by the end, suffering from it. The first half has been put together with a good deal of paranoid urgency. Once it gooses our deepest dread, though, the movie has nowhere to go. Morgan Freeman, as the CIA director, and Affleck demonstrate a seasoned team’s nimbly cutting spontaneity.