Since the Cold War thawed a few years ago, movies concerning nuclear brinkmanship not based on the Book of Revelation have all but disappeared. George Clooney’s recent live TV remake of the 1964 thriller Fail-Safe notwithstanding, people seem to have forgotten there are still enough hostile warheads out there to reduce The Home of the Brave to The Land of Carmelized Cheez Whiz. So when I ran across this previously unheard of film by writer/director Rod Lurie, whose upcoming political drama The Contender looks pretty good, I couldn’t resist giving it a look.
Set in 2008, Deterrence takes place over the course of a few hours in a snowbound Colorado diner, where U.S. President Walter Emerson (Kevin Pollack) gets stranded while campaigning. When word comes that Iraq has once again overrun Kuwaiti oil fields, and this time boasts ballistic missiles to leverage its adventurism, Emerson has only his chief of staff (Timothy Hutton), National Security Advisor (Sheryl Lee Ralph, from “Moesha”), secret service agents, a TV crew, and a few diner employees and patrons to turn to for moral support.
Thanks to the claustrophobic, almost stagy setting, Deterrence delivers a few moments of startling tension and gravity, especially when the possibly insane President orders a preemptive nuke strike on Baghdad. But it devolves into a reactionary fantasy of sorts, complete with a deus ex machina denouement that reads like a Tom Clancy technophile’s fondest wish.
Too bad. The real world is still chock-ful-o’-megatonnage in missile silos, submarines, and by now maybe even backyard laboratories. This film at least has the nerve to explore the subject in an unconventional, if only rarely thoughtful, manner. Until enough folks get more worried about the issue, we’ll continue with tens of thousands of independently targetable reasons to lose sleep. C
Get your own Free Home Page