Doomsday Gun - Die Waffe des Satans

Another good example of how a tv movie can, perhaps within bland and low-cost production values, be more interesting and truthful than the standard Hollywood film.

Another respondent has described how well the film captures the creative moment within engineering, and that's all true. I think Langella's performance was also an excellent representation of a buccaneering businessman, drawing about him intelligent people he trusts and inspiring them, although occasionally haranguing them.

Good scenes .. Gerald Bull dining on the grave of a famous German artilleryman. The Israeli spy chief walking morosely around the Baghdad arms fair looking at all the hardware he would one day have to face. The nods and winks of the British establishment as they turn a blind eye to the production of Saddam's supergun.

Yes it clunks here and there. But fine acting and a literate script. More absorbing than most films which cost 10 times as much.

Seven out of ten.

As an engineer's son, I have never seen a better portrayal of an engineer's enthusiasm for new problems and new challenges. In one unforgettable scene, Frank Langella brought to the screen for the first time in my opinion what can only be called, "the-joy-of-development."

Too often films that deal with invention focus on that moment when the problem comes together and is solved. What they fail to recognize is the first step, when the men and women are looking at the challenge ahead has even more emotional potential. Thankfully the writers and actors in this film did not forget this human truth.

The cast is excellent. The script is uneven, but the only reason this is obvious is because instead of staying mildly good throughout, like most made for cable films, this movie is mildly good with occasional scenes of brilliance.

If you are an engineer or just have one as a friend or member of the family, see this film. It's a wonder.

I enjoyed this movie because I can vaguely remember the circumstances surrounding his death and the noticeable lack of attention paid to it in Canada. The story is interesting and the character study is fascinating. I thought that Frank Langella was right for the role. Not only is he relatively unknown by Hollywood standards, he is also Canadian. This is a case where a man's dream to build the biggest and best arms overrides his sense of morality.He was willing to sell his technology to anyone regardless of how it would be used. He wasn't interested in profit - it was all in the interest of personal aggrandizement. The movie probably could have been better (at least in the glitzy Hollywood sense) but the story is told in a fairly straightforward and interesting manner allowing the viewer to decide for him/herself about ends versus means.

I found this to be very interesting. It was straight Forward and nothing added or omitted made it even better. The acting was good and the story made you wonder: would you do the same thing? After watching this, I was reminded that so many of the nations that hate us, we have helped create. As it said at the end "It is estimated that almost $3 million dollars of taxpayer money was sent to Iraq to arm them". The United States creates these monsters and then ends up having to face them. We did the same thing in Afghanstan in the name of National Pride. By arming the rebels who eventually became the Taliban, It became the mistake that came back and bite us on the ass. Now our Troops are paying for it. I really liked this movie.

One reviewer claimed that the idea of a Supergun was impractical due to the huge flame that could easily be observed from satellites, and that such a gun would take days to clean out and reload.

This is not correct.

A supergun can work, and is no more impractical than a fixed airbase or missile launch site.

The German superguns did work, and many rounds were fired both in testing and operationally - at Luxembourg.

Iran would have had difficulty destroying a firing site. Its ground attack capability was not good, and the gun itself would be a small target. Flames could not be seen from space, even if Iran did have a satellite over Iraq at the time of firing.

It would also have been an ideal weapon with which to launch projectiles against the state of Israel.