Is Paranoia Mushrooming in Baltimore? It’s a Movie

Baltimore gets nuked in “The Sum of All Fears.” And people here seem to be taking it all in stride.

“I haven’t heard a whole lot on the street about it, to be honest,” says Mayor Martin O’Malley, who attended a special screening of the film. “It’s certainly riveting to see your skyline with a mushroom cloud rolling over it. But then, Hollywood has been sending tidal waves over New York for years.”

In the film, based on Baltimore native Tom Clancy’s 1991 novel, his hometown falls victim to the ultimate terrorist attack while hosting the Super Bowl (yet another flight of fancy). Clancy’s hero, Jack Ryan (Ben Affleck, taking over for Harrison Ford, who played Ryan in two earlier films), then has to convince U.S. leaders that terrorists were behind the attack, and not the Russians.

Whatever Ryan succeeds or doesn’t succeed in doing, Baltimore does not fare well here. But contrary to what some nervous prognosticators feared, no mass paranoia seems to be gripping the city; no one seems overly concerned that fiction and truth might be reflective of each other.

The city police chief won’t talk about it, fire officials say it isn’t on their radar screens and theater operators say they haven’t noticed any undue concern over what Hollywood has devised for Charm City.

“Nothing,” says Scott Cohen, of R/C Theaters, which is playing the film at its Eastpoint and Carrolltowne Mall cinemas. “I haven’t heard anything.”

Down the road in Washington, D.C., officials of the U.S. Customs Office staged a news conference this week to show off all the technological wizardry they’ve put in place to ensure renegade atomic bomb parts don’t find their way into or out of this country undetected.

But even they had to admit they weren’t reacting to any upsurge in concern over the possibility of such an event happening; the movie’s release just provided them a handy excuse to tell the public what has changed in the 10 years since Clancy wrote his book. That includes not only improved technology, but greater sharing of information with our country’s trading partners.

“I’m told it is a very well-put-together movie,” says Customs spokesman Jim Michie, “and Tom Clancy always writes a very good book. But something like this happening is very, very unlikely. It might have happened in 1991, but not today.”

And if you’re concerned that the movie was No. 1 at the box office last weekend (bringing in $31.2 million), and worry that means people are flocking to theaters because of some sense the filmmakers are onto something, don’t be. This is the fourth Clancy novel to be turned into a movie, and all four have opened at No. 1.

By all accounts, it’s the Clancy franchise that’s putting people in the seats, not obsession with an impending Armageddon.

And here in Charm City? “I think Baltimoreans are always kind of thrilled to see their city make the big screen, even if we are getting nuked,” says O’Malley.

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Chris Kaltenbach is a reporter at the Baltimore Sun, a Tribune company.