I suppose this film should not technically be in this category, as it takes place in contemporary times. However, it fits into the Doomsday Thriller category of movie, and its in good company with some others we should touch on. Such filmes would include Fail Safe, Dr. Strangelove, On The Beach, The Bedford Incident, and War Games.
This movie, quite frankly, maybe the very best of them, although Dr. Strangelove would certainly give it a run for that.
Using a technique used in the recent movie Dunkirk, this film has a series of timelines all of which center around the same thing. An inbound intercontinental missile, launched somewhere in the Pacific, has been detected and there's a mere 20 minutes to address the situation. The launch was undetected, so its unclear who sent the single missile on its way. At first it's assumed that its probably a North Korean test and will drop in the Pacific, but soon its clear that it is not.
The timeline involves an anti ballistic missile unit attempting to shoot the missle down, the senior leaders of the military attempting to figure out what is going on and how to deal with it, and the President of the United States, at a public relations event, struggling to determine how, if at all, the country should react to a missle that seems likely to hit U.S. soil.
It's very well done and frankly probably a lot more realistic than people may wish to admit. Cell phone discipline breaks down nearly immediately, which on the cusp of a nuclear disaster, it likely would. The individual reactions, from stoic to distraught, are likely fairly accurate too. All in all, I can't find anything to criticize about this film, although government officials have, most particularly the U.S. Military which insists that in this scenario it'd likely have a 100% chance of shooting the inbound missile down.
Uh huh.
Which leaves this film a very disturbing one.
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