Countdown to Zero

"There's no doubt in my mind that if terrorists had acquired a nuclear weapon, they would not hesitate to use it." Former CIA covert operations officer Valerie Plame Wilson

Countdown to Zero is as apocalyptic as An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's documentary on global warming: It is fear-mongering enough that it hurts the effort to bring a necessary return to Cold- War thinking.

Countdown to Zero is single minded in its effort to have zero nuclear weapons, of which there are more than 23,000 in the world. When the documentary arrives at calling for a popular movement, by which President Kennedy admitted he was influenced, it loses some credibility. No amount of popular demand will, for instance, change Osama bin Laden's resolve to exact the deaths of millions of Americans should he gain the necessary ingredients. The documentary's point can't be denied: Nuclear proliferation is so possible now that it seems almost impossible to stop it. The sloppy Russian storage of enriched uranium and plutonium is scary. Although over a hundred countries have disavowed nuclear weapons, hundreds like the US and Russia jealously retain them and some sell the theory if not the ingredients.

In a film almost devoid of light moments, the sometimes amusing Boris Yeltsin in 1995 inadvertently showed how serendipity can be a force in our favor. He questioned if the US had launched a missile toward Russia even though his advisors said it had. He prevailed, Russia did not retaliate, and the world discovered that only a scientific rocket had been launched. Whew!

Countdown to Zero makes a manipulative point by showing people in the street calling for zero weapons. Where are those opposed to zero? Most of us agree to a total ban except those security-minded who know deterrence is still a trump card impressive to diplomats and terrorists. While this documentary adds a little to the race to disarm, it lacks the balance a fair documentary should have. But then, Al Gore and Michael Moore haven't been accused of being balanced either, and they both live in nice houses.

Fox News abandoned its balancing act long ago in the face of soaring ratings. Who said life is fair? or balanced?

This documentary takes a look at nuclear weapons and the rise of terrorism. Various terrorist groups try to buy, steal, or build a nuclear bomb. Russia is a source of many stolen nuclear material. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the safeguards seem to fade away and many attempted smuggled nuclear material has been caught. It's unknown how much have not been caught. Then there are the nukes that is kept by the nuclear powers. There are accidents. There are close calls. There is proliferation. There is the possibility of war. There is an ever-rising possibility of nuclear weapon use in today's complex world. Filmmaker Lucy Walker is not subtle about its anti-nuke message. She's also convincing in her logical, thorough examination of the issue. There is not a lot of new investigations. However, the regular guy on the street would probably be shocked at some of the presentation.

Firstly I understand how many people will feel after watching this movie. That another liberal agenda is being played up and the end to nuclear armament is just asking for terrorism to advance within our country, you couldn't be more wrong. Being in the military for almost ten years it was my experience that most folks get three things wrong when they think about someone using such a device in our country. One, they believe that it comes from a country. This kind of terrorism has no country and has no head to govern it, merely opportunity. The idea that you can "nuke them back" gets a little complicated when the bomb may come from a diplomatically friendly country or even from within our own. Two that such a device is complicated and needs teams of people and money to create, not so. Such a device can be crudely manufactured with a lead pipe 4gm of enriched plutonium and a shotgun shell. The devices themselves do not need to be complex to kill several thousand people, and the people setting them off probably have no qualms about killing themselves in the process. A crudely made machine can be made from almost anything you can find in a hardware store and those items are so everyday that they will not raise any FBI flags. Lastly, Three that there is a solution to such a problem. There isn't one. While the film makes a proud gesture at telling us that all we need to do is this... That is a pipe dream and besides we have gone to far down the path of destruction to make it any better. So in all of this what might be the way to make any of these problems go away. Again I'm sorry to say, nothing. We now have to live in a world where this "might" happen any day at any time. The only thing we can do is hope that we find better ways of detecting potential threats than by clandestinely stumbling into them. The movie is a gem in terms of showing that the "human" part of these weapons is the most dangerous part of them. With respect to our last president he finger that could push the button was also attached to the brain of a recovering alcoholic judgment should be reserved for the viewer and their experience but keep in mind that these things however embellished are real and are waiting right within and outside your door.

This is an ugly little film, I watched it because I wanted to see a balanced account of the state of world power and the insanity of the mutual destruction doctrine, what I got was a piece of propaganda that Goebbels himself would have been proud of. I watched open mouthed as the political bias of the makers was laid bare for all to see, they must really think we are moronic. If as I suspect this is just a 'psy-op' to make the world believe that is 'woz the Arabs, wot dun it' when a nuclear device is exploded on US soil, then you will see the truth in what I'm saying soon, I hope to the pit of my soul that I am wrong.

After a rather boring last few days, I finally got a bit of a shock after watching Lucy Walker's unsettling documentary, Countdown to Zero.

Using the quote "Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, etc." by John F. Kennedy as a structure of storytelling basis, Countdown to Zero explains in an essay-like form of the dangers of nuclear weapons even after decades since the end of the Cold War, and how these could be detonated, intentionally or unintentionally, and blow numbers of the human race off the earth.

Walker explains this in three categories: "Madness" "Accident" and "Miscalculation." Examining the back story of the invention of the A-Bomb by Oppenheimer, to more current events of near catastrophe, she exacts just the right tone that is necessary for the film. While the editing and pacing feels very slow, and a bit choppy at times, as well as slipping a little back into madness every so often, it's nothing if not a brilliant piece of research into this very subject.

It's a very eye opening movie, probably the best example of this, and the best scene of the film, is a hypothetical nuclear explosion taking place in New York City at Times Square after the New Year's Eve countdown, that features a brilliant sound mixture of audio narrations by many of Walker's sources by Michael Minkler and Tony Lamberti, and boy, is it one intense hypothetical.

It's a compelling piece of film making that asks many to help eliminate a major threat, and never becomes sleep inducing.

I give Countdown to Zero *** out of ****