Pentagon big guns boom in new film

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal">WASHINGTON: The military deployment involved two B-2 bombers, two F-16 fighter jets and the National Airborne Operations Center, the highly secure communications aircraft, in a modified 747 jet, reserved for the president and his top staff in case of nuclear attack.<br />Three Marine Corps CH-53E helicopters, a UH-60 Army helicopter, four ground vehicles and more than 50 marines and Army troops also took part.There was an aircraft carrier, too: the John Stennis, a 97,000-ton, nuclear-powered floating city with more than 80 aircraft and a crew of 5,000. The massive mobilization by the Pentagon was part of a joint assault with a staunch historic ally, Hollywood. It might have been called Operation Product Placement, but most people know it as <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">The Sum of All Fears</span>, the new movie adaptation of the 1991 Tom Clancy book about nuclear terrorism.<br />The military establishment has been cooperating with Hollywood for nearly a century, with a noticeable break in the Vietnam years. But in recent times, with movie budgets swelling into the hundreds of millions of dollars, the Defense Department’s contribution and thus the American taxpayer’s has grown ever bigger and more elaborate.<br />It seems to have reached a new high with The Sum of All Fears, for which Paramount Pictures deployed two Hollywood stars, Ben Affleck and Morgan Freeman, supported by the celluloid equivalent of a small nation’s armed forces. <br />Besides huge amounts of hardware, the government also provided access to its inner sanctums. Affleck, who plays the CIA agent Jack Ryan, consulted with officials and analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency’s headquarters in Langley, Va., where the CIA director, George Tenet, also gave the filmmakers a personal tour.<br />Total charge to Paramount Pictures for use of the equipment and personnel? Less than $1 million. Value to Paramount? Priceless. The Sum of All Fears is the nation’s box-office leader, having taken in $61.8 million since its release two weeks ago. The movie cost $68 million to make.<br />What Hollywood gets out of this relationship is clear a level of realism that would be almost impossible to duplicate, even digitally. “Audiences sense the real thing when they see it,� said Mace Neufeld, the movie’s producer. “That makes a difference in the quality of the film.�<br />The military gets the chance to put its best foot forward, which officials say is essential in seeking recruits at a time when there is no draft and the nation is on a war footing.<br />“We want the opportunity to communicate directly to the American public through that powerful medium,� said Philip Strub, the Pentagon’s special assistant for entertainment media. But it is less clear what taxpayers reap from the relationship.<br /><span style="" font-style:="" italic="">(NYT News Service)</span> </div> </div>