3. Fail Safe (1964)
Incredibly tense and riveting Cold War cock up drama directed by Sidney Lumet, Fail-Safe boasts a sterling cast (Henry Fonda, Dan O'Herlihy, Walter Matthau) and poses an interesting dilemma: what would happen in the event of an accidental nuclear strike by either of the Great Powers? In the film, it is America that commits the balls up. Now this is the early 1960s when tensions were probably at their highest between East and West so this has the potential to produce disastrous results - possibly nuclear apocalypse. The detection of an unidentified object in American radars sends a faulty strike code to go ahead and launch a nuke bound for Moscow. The protocol for the attack cannot be reversed and the US President (Henry Fonda) enters negotiations with the Soviets to do damage limitation - namely, avoid an all out nuclear war. To satisfy the Soviets, the President agrees for the USA to take an attack upon New York City to balance out the strike on Moscow. We never see the Soviets in the duration of the film - the enemy has no face and this heightens the tension as we don't know who we are dealing with. There is no music in the film and the location takes place in the claustrophobic President's bunker. The only time we see real life is at the end when the camera shoots people in New York City going about their business and freezes the frame at moment of impact of the nuke. Very sobering. The whole film is a sobering experience. We do not know how many near misses there were during the Cold War. We do not know if such a scenario could have occurred as easily as portrayed in the film. Now that the Cold War is over and Russian and American nukes are no longer pointed at each other, we may feel a sense of relief. However, there are other countries in the world with their nukes pointed at each other and we have no idea what their control systems are like. And as I said in the intro, with basket case state North Korea running nuclear tests, maybe we shouldn't be so reticent about the threat of nuclear weapons.