Doomsday Gun

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.

The only thing I can add is that as a Canadian, I continue to be disappointed in our Government protection of our fellow citizens. RIP Gerald Bull and William Sampson and all of you have been left behind.

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.

Interesting fact based spy film with supposed allies backstabbing each other, each with their own agenda for using an engineer's gigantic gun he is developing. The long range implications for Middle East Countries is factored against the region's importance as an oil producer. Profit and greed is offset by the scientific drive of one man, who's vision is well beyond the present, possibly offering him the immortal recognition he desires. This is well acted, fast paced, and intriguing. There is even an open ended conclusion that begs discussion. The miniatures and computer renderings of the big guns are superbly done, and the film is relevant even with all the time that has passed. - MERK

Just a quibble to correct Jonathan from Hoboken's identification of Gerry Bull as an America. He was Canadian (you can even see him brandishing his Canadian passport in the final airport scene with Price (Spacey) near the end.) Gerry Bull was an inconvenient Canadian, in that he thought too big for a Canadian, and, like many other Canadians of talent and vision, eventually had to leave the country to achieve what he wanted. He was a brilliant supersonic aerodynamics engineer, who had contributed to the Avro Arrow program, and had run HARP (High Altitude Research Program) which had been, ahem, aimed at achieving spaceflight using guns, a la Jules Verne. It had operated the original 'supergun' in the Caribbean, with battleship guns put end to end. Bull gave up on Canada when Canada gave up on him, and that's when he became the international long-range artillery guy, selling his expertise to whoever paid - Israel, South Africa, Iraq. I figure if Israel could knock out Saddam's Osirak nuclear plant with an air strike, it wouldn't be past them to knock off the guy about to give Saddam a supergun with which to shell Tel Aviv.

The movie, though heavy on the CIA-is-the-root-of-all-evil conspiracy theories, was entertaining and not that bad, especially as a made-for-TV job, with, I thought, pretty good casting (I always like Michael Kitchen).