The Sum of All Fears<br></br>Christie Malry's Own Double Entry<br></br>Spy Kids 2<br></br>Rififi

Pssst ... we're being subversive

It might not seem too surprising that The Sum of All Fears (12) did well in America. It's the fourth movie based on Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan novels, and its hero is a CIA man who saves the planet from nuclear armageddon. Even with Ben Affleck taking over a lead role previously essayed by Alec Baldwin and Harrison Ford (if James Bond can stay the same age for 40 years, why shouldn't Jack Ryan grow 30 years younger?), it pushes the usual buttons: there's some action, some deduction, some high-level politicians briefing each other as they march along the corridors of power, and there's a plot that shuttles around the globe, with a handy sub-title after each scene change to tell us which country we're in.

Just what the spin doctor ordered? Well, no, not quite. The film is oddly short of the optimism you'd presume US audiences would want after 11 September. Its plot revolves around a neo-Nazi group's nuclear attack on American soil, and what's startling is that there is no gung-ho militarism, no faith in the competence of the President or the secret services. For a big-budget Hollywood potboiler, The Sum of All Fears is positively subversive.

Not that I'd recommend it. The first hour of the film is too slow to be tense; the second hour too fast. The first hour is at pains to be feasible; in the second, Affleck's non-entity hero becomes Superman. It's not a very good movie. But it is curious to see a blockbuster that adds to America's fears, rather than reducing them.

Christie Malry's Own Double Entry (18) was due to be released over a year ago until its distributors chickened out: they didn't know how to market an experimental adaptation of a notoriously unfilmable novel about anarcho-terrorism and accountancy. You can see their point. Nick Moran stars as Christie, part Tom Courtenay in Billy Liar, part Brad Pitt in Fight Club. He's a gormless bank clerk who retreats into dreams of sex and revenge, and then determines to make those dreams a reality according to the principles of double-entry bookkeeping: for every aggravation (debit) there must be recompense (credit).

If his campaign of violent direct action weren't enough to give the distributors sleepless nights, the virtuoso editing shuffles the chronology into a patchwork of reveries and memories. And there's a superfluous subplot set in 15th-century Milan. The film might be poetically shot and spiced with deadpan black comedy, but it was never going to be a multiplex smash. What it might be is a cult classic. Christie Malry is now being screened at the ICA, so at least a few people will be able to relish the droll characterisations of Moran and Neil Stuke, the scabrous soundtrack by Luke Haines, and the all-round audacity. It deserves to be seen – several times over.

Spy Kids was one of 2001's gems – a rampantly creative, uncynical family adventure directed by Robert Rodriguez and starring Antonio Banderas and Carla Gugino as two retired agents whose children took up where they left off. Just one year later, Rodriguez has matched it with Spy Kids 2 (U). He doesn't fall into the Men in Black II trap of remaking the first film, either. Carmen (Alexa Varga) and Juni (Daryl Sabara), our pint-sized heroes, now belong to an international junior spy organisation, and if they want to beat a rival brother-sister team they'll have to complete a mission on an island full of Ray Harryhausen-style monsters.

Rodriguez doesn't hold back on the pro-togetherness, anti-materialism messages, but as with everything else in the film, the moralising never grates because it hasn't been formulated by committee: it comes from the heart of one man. Rodriguez is Spy Kids 2's writer, director, producer, composer, editor, director of photography, production designer, visual effects supervisor, sound designer and re-recording mixer. He got someone else to do the make-up, lazy bugger.

On re-release this week, Rififi (12) is a French crime thriller from 1955 which could well be the most gripping heist movie of them all. Its centrepiece is a seminal robbery sequence that lasts 30-odd minutes, without dialogue or background music; it's so absorbing, it's 20 minutes before you notice their absence.

n.barber@independent.co.uk