So true, it almost isn't funny! Almost...

Rating: 10/10 (25 January 2007)

Stanley Kubrick, not a man known for his sense of humor - The Killing is too bitingly cynical to count as comedy - had the audacity to turn his planned nuclear war project into a comedy because "people would never believe a straight-faced version". He proceeded to create cinema's most stunning satyr to date.
The crazed (and perhaps sexually inadequate) General Jack T. Ripper (Hayden) orders his planes to go into radio silence and drop their nukes on Russia. this creates diplomatic turmoil as the inept US president (Sellers) and drunk Russian premier bicker over the phone to assign blame, knowing that unless the planes are stopped, automated retaliation systems will be activated and the world will pretty much suffer a nuclear holocaust. In step lunatic military adviser Generaé Turgidson (Scott) and former Nazi scientist Dr. Strangelove (Sellers also) to try and remedy the situation. Meanwhile, efforts are made to capture Ripper - from without and within, thanks to his hapless British adviser Mandrake (sellers again) - and reach the planes.
The most ironic part of the plot is that you could almost imagine it being a credible Tom Clancy novel. Yet most of its potential lies in the absurd, and it is perfectly captured by side-splitting dialogue, dead serious expressions, and stellar turns by Peter Sellers, probably the greatest chameleon of comedy ever to grace the screen.
But for all the excellent cast's madness, this remains Kubrick's show throughout. Witness the atmospheric sets, gorgeous photography, and immortal shots (something regarding a cowboy and a nuclear missile). Kubrick also very aptly uses the theme of sexual repression to underline all these violent boys' aggressiveness: the film begins with planes "fornicating" in mid-air, while something is blatantly wrong in Ripper's pants. and then there's that ending, something only Kubrick would have dared...
To anyone interested in war, politics, History or even the state of humanity in general and capable of self-deprecation, I can not recommend this film strongly enough. A miraculous satyr and truly one of the best films ever made!