If you throw together a little talk about politics and war, you get the local news – and the premise behind the movie “The Sum of All Fears.”

The first half of the film moves along slowly as director Phil Alden Robinson sets up the plot and key characters. During this time, we hear a lot of political gibberish and military terminology that could go over some peoples’ heads. This is all building up to a nuclear explosion in Baltimore, Md., that nearly kills the president. From here the movie turns into a race against the clock between the United States and Russia.

As it turns out, a small group of Russian terrorists are trying to start a war between the two countries by detonating a nuclear bomb. Now it’s up to a CIA agent to convince the U.S. military that Russia isn’t at fault before a war breaks out between the two countries.

Ben Affleck plays the CIA agent, Jack Ryan. Ryan tries to keep his job a secret by telling people, including his girlfriend, that he is a historian.

Morgan Freeman plays William Cabot, one of the president’s right-hand men. He serves as Ryan’s mentor and boss during the ordeal.

This film is full of great acting. Aside from Affleck’s and Freeman’s performances, the supporting cast does a good job of rounding things out. Liev Schreiber, who plays John Clark, a U.S. spy, embodies everything we think of when we think of a spy. He is cunning, smart and not afraid of anything, even when he has two guns pointed at his face.

James Cromwell plays the president, a role that fits him perfectly. Cromwell is no stranger to playing an authority figure. He has played everything from a general, a senator and a judge. Naturally, he fits right in here.

The other highlight of this movie is the nuclear explosion. For years, movies have attempted to re-enact what a nuclear explosion might look like, and “The Sum of All Fears” seems to hit the nail right on the head. As a special feature with the DVD, we get to see how these explosive scenes were created.

In one of the explosion shots, a caravan of cars is hit by the blast and is flipped over in a cloud of dust. We learn in the behind-the-scenes footage that the cars had hydraulic beams underneath them that would pop up, causing the car to flip on command. Other explosion scenes are done mostly with computer generated images, but still are interesting to watch.

The movie is good and the extras are better than those I have seen so far. There are several commentaries on the disc. To name a few, one with Phil Alden Robinson, one with Tom Clancy (the author of the books that the Jack Ryan character came from) and one with John Lindley, the film’s cinematographer.

In Lindley’s commentary, he explains some of the camera shots and angles in the movie and how they were done. This might be an extra reason for you to buy the DVD.