Nuclear war is always very frightening to even think about, we’ve seen so many films portray nuclear war, from Threads to the States version The Day After, we’ve seen a made for TV movie called Special Bulletin, but let’s talk about a movie called Fail Safe.

Fail Safe follows several departments, the pilots, the men on the ground in the war room, and the President of the United States, a computer error triggers a fail safe command ordering a group of pilots to bomb Russia.

What follows is arguably the most tense edge of your seat rollercoaster, as not only the men in the war room try to stop the pilots from reaching Moscow but the President as well, directed by Sydney Lumet (who gave us the courtroom drama 12 Angry Men) and starring Henry Fonda as the President and Walter Mathau who plays a political theorist.

The film itself is fantastic, it was a blind buy for me as I saw it in the Criterion Collection, bought it and watched it the minute I got home, let’s just say I was pleasantly surprised by this film.

It’s a stark reminder as to how the Cold War was and just how close we come to nuclear war, but I want to discuss the ending.

Basically everything that can go wrong does go wrong, plans to shoot down the pilots fail as they enter Russian airspace, the President tries his best to talk to said pilots, but turns out the Russians can duplicate the Presidents voice, he then tries to get the main pilots wife to talk him out of it, which is arguably the most tense moment of the film.

The men in the war room then discuss what happens next, the President makes the Russian ambassador an offer, “if the bombers reach Moscow and drop the nuke I will get my pilots to bomb New York”

Not only is that the toughest decision for any President to make it’s a scary one at that, the pilots bomb Moscow in possibly one of the most eeriest scenes in cinema, we hear the Russian ambassador say “the sky, it’s so bright” followed by a a loud shrieking sound, Moscow is now gone.

The President then orders a good friend of his to head up to the skies and head to New York.

The plane flies over New York and uses the Empire State Building as ground zero, we then see the people of New York, men women and children go about their day unaware of what is about to happen.

The eerie part of this is the cinematography that follows, freeze frame and closeups, it’s a great technique especially for the year this film was released, the film then cuts to a title card followed by the end credits.

And that’s Fail Safe, as the title suggests its like if Dr Strangelove wasn’t satire and a comedy, it makes a great companion piece I must admit.

The acting is phenomenal and so is the plot of the film, the pacing is great, at 117 minutes boy does that fly by, trust me you’ll be on the edge of your seat by the half hour mark.

I give this film a ten out of ten, it’s tense and a stark reminder of the Cold War era, as always catch ya later 🙂