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| FILM DETAILS | Certificate
TBC | | Cast
Tony Blair
Mikhail Gorbachev
Jimmy Carter
Valerie Plame. | | Directors
Lucy Walker. | | | Screenwriters | | Running Time
91 minutes |
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Countdown To Zero
The real Judgment Day
Plot
The shadow of nuclear annihilation is ever present in Lucy Walker's examination of proliferation, terrorism and deterrence. Review
On the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s famous anti-proliferation speech, Lucy Walker’s follow-up to her Academy Award-nominated documentary Waste Land brings the nuclear debate into the 21st century, marshalling an impressive array of talking heads and archive footage to reignite an issue which, despite sabre-rattling in Iran and North Korea, and the recent tragedy in Japan, hasn’t been a ‘hot button’ topic since the ’80s. Here, Walker’s customary aversion to voiceover narration works against her, giving the whole enterprise a distracted, unfocused feel. With another month or two in the edit suite, this could have been genuinely incendiary: An Inconvenient Truth for the anti-nuclear lobby.
Verdict
Walker was Oscar nominated for Waste Land this year, and while this occasionally unfocused doc doesn't hit those heights, it's still a valuable and scary film that should be seen.
Reviewed by David Hughes
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