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COUNTDOWN TO ZERO
Director: Lucy Walker MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:31 Release Date: 7/23/10 (limited); 7/30/10 (wider) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 29, 2010 Lucy
Walker's Countdown to Zero is successful and necessary fear-mongering. There is no hope at the end of this doomsday documentary, only a number
to text to show one's support for nuclear disarmament. It's a sign of good intentions that really only highlights how bleak the
entire scenario really is. It
is only a flash of light and a beat between the detonation of a nuclear weapon
and destruction and death the world has only seen twice. Walker makes the argument that at least a third time is
approaching—sooner rather than later—unless drastic steps are taken. These steps have been shared by American leaders of such disparate
ideologies as John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and, most recently, Barrack Obama.
A call for nuclear disarmament is not a political platform; it is common
sense. Countdown
to Zero, then, is admirably apolitical. The film begins by detailing the ease with which a group could smuggle
highly enriched uranium or plutonium into the United States. It is a how-to manual, which one could label as irresponsible if not for
the fact that just about all the specifics are known because they have been
attempted already. Nuclear material
can be grabbed from storage in Russia (which a former CIA operative says guards
its potatoes better), brought in through Georgia, and then it's simply a matter
of getting it into a crate aboard a cargo ship. Surely,
these activities can be stopped? Yes,
they can and have been, the experts once in the field state. Although the detectors used at ports across the country are more likely
to alert for cat litter than highly enriched uranium, and every crackdown on a
black market deal or smuggling operation has been the result of nothing more
than pure luck. There
is no blame to any person, political party, or country. It is, for all the doomsday, worst-case scenarios people use for
political ends (In going along with the film's lack of a political position, it
uses the same examples), the result of apathy or complacency. The weapons and materials are
there. That is the way it has been; it is the way it is. Mixed
in with the interviews of former experts (CIA agents, a worker at a nuclear
missile silo, and archive footage of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the "father of
the atomic bomb"), world leaders (Jimmy Carter and Mikhai Gorbachev discuss
the knowledge of having less than half an hour to decide whether to react with
nuclear force), and political heavyweights (e.g., Robert McNamara) are talks
with people on the streets across the globe. Are you scared of a nuclear attack?
How
many countries have nuclear weapons? How
many of those weapons are there? Their
answers are a reflection of the audience. As
the numbers are revealed, the answer to that first question shifts. Some
of the anecdotes are alarming. One
person recounts how a satellite launched to study the Northern Lights was
mistaken for a possible nuclear launch by Russia, and against mandated protocol,
Boris Yeltsin, not knowing there was no threat, decided not to retaliate. Others discuss accidents of bombers carrying nuclear arms crashing or
submarines sinking. If they are
recovered (It's a shock how many times the reports come back that they were
not), sometimes there is evidence that only a few fail-safes stopped a
detonation. The operator at the
missile silo recalls watching Dr.
Strangelove and thinking the whole film was wrong: It wouldn't take a
general to start a falsified nuclear strike. He was a lieutenant and was privy to all the codes and procedures
necessary to do so. Copyright © 2010 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
Buy Related Products Buy the Soundtrack (MP3 download)
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(for
thematic material, images of destruction and incidental smoking)
