The conversion of Tom Clancy's novels to screen appears to be a fine example of the law of diminished returns.

• The Hunt For Red October is one of the great thrillers of all time.
• Patriot Games is Indy vs Boromir and if you've seen American Beauty, then that you've seen Ryan's daughter's boobies - you dirty perv.
• Clear and Present Danger is about a bunch of Mexicans trying to carjack twenty Range Rovers at once, which did more to inspire under privileged urban thugs everywhere than Grand Theft Auto 1, 2 or 3.

No, it's not about Mathsaphobics - that's the Fear of All Sums.

Jesus, if I'd wanted to watch a pasty faced teenager save the world with ICQ, I would have watched "Spy Kids 3: We Have The Worst Parents Ever." You're making a movie in a series people - please try to have some continuity. I can understand Ford leaving because he's been funny ever since he starred in that remake of Robinson Crusoe with "Man Friday, Woman Saturday, Mental Breakdown Sunday" in it but why the fuck do you decide to replace him with the Chin half of Bennifer Inc (as opposed to the Butt half)?

Why not some other actor in his forties - I hear Nick Nolte is looking for work. No, wait, never mind. Well, what about Roy Schneider - he'd make a ripping Jack Ryan.

When I set down to watch this film I realised that continuity was out the window and the man who taught Sandra Bullock the joys of sobriety was the star - or was he? Hmm, we will see. Anyway, I tried to enjoy the movie on its own merits, I really did.

The Germans are great - they have a word which means "Sum of All Fears." They also have a word which means "Rocket Propelled Attack Wagon." But, as this movie will teach us, they also have a dark side. Much like the moon.

The movie opens with an Israeli Skyhawk loaded up with a nuke being shot down over Sinai by a SAM battery during Yom Kippur War. This is despite the fact that the battery was sitting there with active search radars on, announcing their presence to all of the Arab world. The pilot was distracted at the crucial moment because he was too busy staring at the picture of his wife and kid on the plane's dash.

A jet's dash is a complicated thing - it's covered with lots of buttons that are marked IF FLASHING YOU=DEAD - so why the fuck are you going to stick a picture of your kid where it can distract you. "Okay, height good, radar clear, oh look, Billy looks so cute, when I get back we're going to play ball and I'm going OHMYG-" It happened to Cougar in Top Gun, it happened to that guy in that movie I haven't seen, it happened in Iron Eagle I, II and IV, and it will happen to YOU.

The camera pans across the wreckage, past the picture of his kid as everyone knows that items with emotional significance are indestructible. This explains why dolls always survive plane crashes and why the US government is currently marrying off their remaining Space Shuttles. Apparently the Israelis are unconcerned that their nuclear bomb is missing because the thing lies in it undisturbed until a bunch of Arabs dig it up to sell in on the black market.

Now, in the book, the villains were Arabs Extremists and American Militia. In the movie, the Director was driving hard for realism and everyone knows that Arabs and Militia would never succeed in a terrorist attack against America. The idea itself is preposterous! So they decided to replace them with villains far more relevant and realistic for the 21st Century: Nazis, South Africans and Communists. Alone, each of these is a force to be reckoned with, but united, as they have so many times in the past, they are like a Voltron of Evil. We'll need a powerful team if we want to win in a cage match against this line up of baddies.

From left to right we have the villain out of Time Cop, the evil DA out of LA Confidential, a simple farmer, a token black guy who hasn't acted before, the kiddie fiddler from Magnolia, an ambiguously ethnic minority to get the Asians, the Latinos and the Native Americans on line all at once, the evil doctor out of Scrubs and Basketball Player #10 from the Buffy The Vampire Slayer movie. Once again the director's attention to detail and accuracy shine through as he faithfully mimics the staff of the current US administration. OOOH BURN!!!$

And in case we weren't already spending enough time during this movie going "Hey, it's that guy!", they introduce the Russian President - played by the guy who played the General out of 'Allo 'Allo - then immediately kill him. You get just enough time to go "Hey, it's that guy!" but not enough time to actually work out where he's from, ensuring that for the rest of the movie you're half-distracted while trying to work out where the hell he's from.

I am to be described as "Healthy" and "Robust" - ooh, my tickey-ticker!

You might not have realised it by now but I really want to spit on the grave of the Casting Director.

In case we weren't certain that the baddies were evil (the shot of the swastika engraved on the back of his watch was pretty subtle, sure) they have the standard scene where one of them wants to back out the plan so the main baddies obligatory henchman kills him. Hey, here's a tip. If you want to back out of the plan of a psychopath to commit mass murder, don't do it to his face. Do it over the phone, or better still, send an email. From another country. That way, he isn't able to throw you out of an airship and then ask if anyone else wants to "drop out."

Then lots of stuff happens that is just plain boring and stupid. Ryan gets paged by Marla Singer (555-1034) because the Russian President has died so Jack gets to meet Farmer Hoggert. Y'see, Ryan wrote a book on the new Russian President so Morgan Freeman sends him on a midnight CIA mission into Russia. I don't know when the CIA lowered its standards so much that you just needed to be able to handle a word processor to become James Bond but I'm not complaining - I wrote a book on Dreamweaver and next week NASA are sending me to Jupiter.

To my immense surprise, they only puss out a little when it comes to blowing up the Superbowl. In this world where the WTC is digitally edited out and Han Solo shoots first, I was fully expecting them to either blow up somewhere like Latvia instead, or even have the bomb disabled by Ryan at 00:00:03 after he had a thrilling climatic fight with the main villain in the locker room of the Superbowl during half time, killing him in the all American method of throwing a football at his head and yelling "TOUCHDOWN!" Then he does his victory dance. Then he bits into a hamburger while Morgan Freeman chuckles at his antics and the screen freeze frames for the credits to roll.

Instead, they show this sequence of close ups of people in the crowd. This was meant to establish that every life is unique and special and "why can't we all just get along?" Unfortunately, a Superbowl crowd is full of morons with stupid hats and signs saying "COWBOYS 3:14" and it only established that the baddies was doing us a favour by draining the shallow end of the pool.

Go Terrorists!

Then it goes to the standard setting-up-the-explosion long shot of the stadium and you know, you know that it's going to BLOW UP BIG!

And the shot goes on.

And on.

And then it cuts.

AND THEN THE BOMB GOES OFF. OFF SCREEN, THAT IS. And you're just left there yelling "PUSSIES!!!" at the screen.

And then I let the Superbowl get blown up. What?!!

And then the movie actually gets good for a while. The President yells at everyone, we think Ryan is dead, his girlfriend copped a nuclear blast in her face and is most certainly dead, everyone's tooling around in big fuckoff Super Stallion Choppers which kick seven different types of flaming ass and OH MY GOD A SQUADRON OF BACKFIRES JUST DID A SALVO MISSILE ATTACK AND TOASTED AN AIRCRAFT CARRIER I NEED A NEW PAIR OF PANTS BECAUSE I JUST BLEW THE CROTCH OUT OF THESE ONES and then the movie begins to suck again.

It turns out Ryan's not dead - he survived helicopter crash that killed everyone else in the chopper with nothing more than a cosmetic, strategically located cut over one eye. Neither is his girlfriend - despite the fact that she was in front of a window that caught the full brunt of the blast, she also suffers only from a aesthetically stylish cut over one eye.

Morgan Freeman isn't so lucky. He was fleeing from the Superbowl in the same car with the President when the bomb went off but the extraction team who got the big P to safety couldn't be fucked helping anyone else, so poor Mr "Ferris Buellers done taught me how ta soldjer" is left to bled to death in an aid station. Ryan comes along and nicks his photo ID, then has a pointless fight scene where he strangles the Nazi henchman with a chain while a bunch of cops yell "ARE YOU JACK RYAN?" at him.

Meanwhile the Yankee President and the Russian President are having a conversation on IRC. Neither of them uses emoticons though, so things get very heated and they type all in caps at each other. The President gets so cranky that he decides to nuke Russia which just goes to show that the written word is a treacherous thing and nothing replaces a good old phone call. Things are getting very tense when suddenly -

- Jack Ryan uses a dead old black man's photo ID to get into the top secret CIA computer terminal that gives him access to the private chat room where the two Big Ps are yelling at each other.

A/S/L!?!? A/S/L!!!!

1. CIA - Fire your security staff.
2. You know the bit where Ben Affleck does a big speech about saving the world to the duty chief of the CIA, who is so moved that he lets him have access to a secure link between the Russian and American Presidents despite the fact that Ben's using a dead man's credentials and looks like a homeless bum? It sucked, didn't it.

Despite the fact that we've established that both Presidents think Ryan is an idiot, the boss Rooskie decides to take strategic advice from a guy who's credentials are that he wrote a book once. This is also despite the Russian Prez saying Ryan's book was rubbish and also despite the fact that the Americans are currently launching airstrikes against Russian bases.

In Hunt For Red October, the climax was a gunfight in a submarine that was dodging torpedoes being fired at it by another submarine AND an American ASW frigate at the same time. It was TENSE and COOL and THRILLING and then Ryan and Bond talked about their grandfathers as a metaphor for the universality of the fighting man and then the movie ended with a shot of a teddy bear which was OKAY because it simbolised the love and care Ryan has for his family, which underpins his whole character. Plus the bear was in Die Hard, which makes it a Teddy of Catalyst for ASS KICKING. Where the bear goes, ROCKING OUT goes with it.

In this one, Ryan types a speech about honour and responsibility and then he and his girlfriend have a picnic. And then a Russian who turns out to be the secret mole that helped Ryan saved the day (which would have been cool if it had been set up properly but just comes off as lame and contrived) comes over and tells them "Congratulations on your engagement." OMG he only just asked her, how did you know!? Oh right, you're a spy.

Look, to be fair I might be missing some subtlety of an IRC showdown, so I've reproduced the text of the discussion below. If one of you more Internet literate types spot something I missed, please let me know.

></-\/\/\_Prez01>OMG u BOMbed the CHECHYNS!!
><RedLeader>TOLD U I WAS HARDCORE.
></-\/\/\_Prez01>U F*KED UP WHEN U DROPT TEH BOMB ON ME, FGA!
><RedLeader>STFU! NOWAY I MESS WIT U CLAN.
></-\/\/\_Prez01>OH SHIT BRB.
></-\/\/\_Prez01>NOW u CAMPING FAGOTs RUSH MY CARRIER!!!
></-\/\/\_Prez01>HEY!
></-\/\/\_Prez01>U TERE?
><RedLeader>OMG LAG. NO WAY W#E RUSH U!
CIAnaALyst1337haxor has entered the room.
><CIAnaALyst1337haxor>ne 1 45/M/Kremlin?
><CIAnaALyst1337haxor>ne 1 45/M/Kremlin?
><CIAnaALyst1337haxor>ne 1 45/M/Kremlin?
><CIAnaALyst1337haxor>ne 1 45/M/Kremlin?
><CIAnaALyst1337haxor>ne 1 45/M/Kremlin?
><CIAnaALyst1337haxor>Got secrte nuke info. Swap 4 paswords.
></-\/\/\_Prez01>WTF?
><RedLeader>What newz u got?
></-\/\/\_Prez01>F oFF CIAFAG. THIs Private!!!
><CIAnaALyst1337haxor>d00dz! Teh terrorist have set teh bomb!!!11
/-\/\/\_Prez01 set mode +m CIAnaALyst1337haxor
></-\/\/\_Prez01>c u l8r boi
/-\/\/\_Prez01 has kicked CIAnaALyst1337haxor
></-\/\/\_Prez01>rofl! Ciafag haz teh SARS!!!#6
></-\/\/\_Prez01>d00dz!
></-\/\/\_Prez01>3y3 w1ll bomb u
></-\/\/\_Prez01>u there?
></-\/\/\_Prez01>d00dz!
><RedLeader>OMG LAG.

On the Requiem for a Dream rockin scale, I award this movie two ass-2-asses out of five.