Marvelous (small spoilers)

Rating: Null/10 (17 June 2004)

An Air Force General (Sterling Hayden) goes insane and orders a wing of bombers under his command to attack the Soviet Union.
Marvelous satire of Cold War sensibilities. Kubrick's clinical, coolly analytic temperament serves him well here: the old quote goes "the world is a comedy for those who think, a tragedy for those who feel" and Kubrick was definitely a thinker. He clearly sees the whole thing as one bleak, black joke and he manages to get us laughing at our own destruction, no small feat. Movie is filled with priceless comic touches, from Hayden's General, always muttering about precious bodily fluids, to Scott's womanizing General, whose secretary/girlfriend calls him in the War Room, to Peter Sellers as the wimpish President getting into a fight with the Premier of Russian on the phone, arguing about whose "sorrier" about everything, to Sellers again, this time a British officer trying to stave off Armageddon but out of change for the pay phone (Keenan Wynn blows up a Coke machine for Sellers to get change, but warns him "he'll have to answer to the Coca-Cola Company") to Sellars again (three roles!) as a Nazi War Criminal who can barely restrain his sieg heils. Not a perfect movie, a few of the jokes are pretty telegraphed, but it would be churlish to pick nits. A classic, well worth seeing.