The release of “The Sum of All Fears,” Phil Alden Robinson’s adaptation of the 1991 Tom Clancy novel, less than nine months after the events of 9/11 will undoubtedly cause some comment among moviegoers and reviewers. The most memorable sequence in the picture, about a plot to cause a war between the United States and Russia, depicts a terrorist assault on Baltimore using a nuclear bomb, and in the light of recent events the images of a mushroom cloud and massive devastation carry enormous power. But James Cromwell, the lanky actor who plays the American president on whose watch the disaster occurs (and who must struggle to determine the appropriate response), emphasized that the film wasn’t designed merely to shock, and wasn’t shy in expressing his own political views in the process.

“As Phil has said, this is not a movie about terrorism,” Cromwell, who played both the lovable Farmer Hoggett in “Babe” and the duplicitous police captain in “L.A. Confidential,” remarked during a recent Dallas interview. “It’s a movie about what are the responses to terrorism–what does it lead to, what is appropriate, what’s effective? And I think that’s what we’re dealing with now. Are we going to turn America into a fortress and give up our civil liberties and the rights that we cherish as Americans–in which case the terrorists will have won–or are we going to look at the root causes of terrorism, which is not the ‘Axis of Evil,’ it is disenfranchisement, impoverishment, marginalization and the disparity of wealth between the First and Third Worlds.” As to the sequences of mass destruction shown in the film, Cromwell said, “The whole idea was not to exploit the violence, not to dwell on it, but to handle it as economically as you possibly could–as part of a plot element–and not to let it dominate.” Still, he argued, it’s important for tales like “The Sum of All Fears” to be told if the nation is to come to terms with the recent tragedy: “We have to create the story that contains 9/11 to understand what 9/11 means in our lives. Otherwise you either go into denial or unconsciousness, ot it continues to warp what you do because there isn’t closure. And the way we achieve closure is by telling stories. We frame it in a mythic sense in order to be able to handle it and include it and learn from it. And I think to some degree, although our film is just a piece of entertainment, it is part of the process of closure.” Cromwell pointed to the reception the picture had received two days earlier, at a Washington premiere attended by high government officials, as a sign of its success in that regard: “They were real quiet,” Cromwell said of the audience, “and they applauded a lot at the end. So I think they got it. Whether it strikes as close to home for them as I think it will for a regular audience I don’t know. I think the images are very powerful, and I think the resolution of the conflict is very compelling.”

Cromwell, the son of director John Cromwell (who made such classics films as “Of Human Bondage,” “The Prisoner of Zenda” and “Anna and the King of Siam”), noted that he stepped into the role of President Fowler on a dime. “I didn’t have time to really prepare anything,” he quipped. “We finished shooting [the pilot for ‘Citizen Baines,’ the TV series in which he played a U.S. senator recently defeated for re-election] at four o’clock in the morning, I got on a plane at eight, arrived in Montreal, had a hair-piece fitting–that was the only preparation I made, I couldn’t remember a real bald president, so I thought I’d do something to cover up at least part of it–and a costume fitting, and the next day was my first scene.” That sequence was one in which the president delivers a jocular speech to a group of supporters at a fancy dinner. “Four hundred people would laugh uproariously [at the jokes],” he recalled. “And I thought, that’s what it means to be president. I think that’s why I had such a great time.”

Although he’s previously played many authority figures, including Senator Baines, “Fears” represented Cromwell’s first opportunity to act the president–but not the last. Since completing the film he’s gone on to assume the role of Lyndon Johnson in “Little Brother,” which depicts the tense relationship between LBJ and Bobby Kennedy between November, 1963 and the summer of 1968. The actor, a dedicated liberal who as a youth participated in the civil rights struggle in Mississippi and opposed the Vietnam War, looks upon Johnson much more sympathetically in the light of historical perspective. “To me, it is an American tragedy,” he said. “He was the consummate politician…and he was given the opportunity under tragic circumstances to be the greatest president we ever had. And it was right there, and he knew it…and he had a mandate from the people and he saw the direction it had to go in, and it was the right direction, and he was willing to go there. And then this stinking war came along….He could not comprehend that the best thing to do was cut and run. You can see the pain in that man’s face. I have a lot of sympathy for him.”

Once the presidential bug strikes, moreover, it seems impossible to shake–even when it’s only play-acting. When asked about the possibility of his taking on Abraham Lincoln, Cromwell noted a family connection. “That would be interesting,” he said. “My father made a picture called ‘Abe Lincoln in Illinois,’ with Ray Massey–he gave a really nice performance. I don’t know what I’d do with Lincoln. That would be fun. That would please my father–he was a Civil War buff.” But playing an elected official is as far as James Cromwell ever wants to go. “I’m involved in politics for real,” he noted, referring to his activism. “But I would never be involved in electoral politics.” The compromises politicians inevitably have to make would be too much for him: “I don’t have to worry about what I say and what I believe–which I couldn’t do if I were a politician.”