A visionary and daring anti-war film

Rating: 8/10 (6 March 2004)

There have only been a couple of Stanley Kubrick films that I have not seen, and Dr. Strangelove was one of them. I'm not entirely sure why I never got around to seeing this one, especially since it is deemed such a classic, but nevertheless, until two weeks ago despite the fact that I have had this DVD in my collection for five years, it had not yet hit my viewing queue. Perhaps I had some preconceptions that it would be a war film I wouldn't be interested in. Of course, as what happens with most films I nonsensically and irrationally (and sometimes unintentionally) avoid, I ended up absolutely loving this film.
Peter Sellers is a triple threat in this satire about nuclear war in the face of the Cold War. He plays a British military officer under a maniacal United States General who decides that he wants to wage nuclear war on the Russians without anyone's approval. Sellers' role is to find out the code that will end the attack, but military bureaucracy makes his job that much more difficult. Sellers also plays the President of the United States, a calm, but fairly uninformed fellow who relies on his strategists in the War Room to work out this crisis. In the War Room is Sellers' third role and the title character, Dr. Strangelove, a wheelchair bound German scientist with an alien hand that has a mind of its own. Joining him in the War Room is George C. Scott, who plays another top military official who is trying to talk some sense into the President while spouting his anti-Russian sentiments. To throw yet another wrench into the mix, we have an airplane carrying a nuclear bomb that has no radio contact and is ready to drop the second they reach their target.
The film itself is excellent  the script is biting, very sarcastic and disdainful of politics. It is no surprise that the names of characters are such like 'Jack D. Ripper'. The shining trait of this film is definitely the acting  while we naturally come to expect that Peter Sellers is going to frighteningly good in just about anything he is in, I was most surprised and delighted to find myself in tars laughing over none other than George C. Scott's performance. My friends and I watched this film as one of our `film club' selections, and I think we watched the scene when his mistress calls him in the War Room at least three times. As someone who has only experienced Scott in such films as Patton and The Changeling, this was a hilarious change for me.
Dr. Strangelove immediately became one of my favorite Kubrick films with only one viewing, and I think that the visionary approach and the unabashed social commentary in the face of the Cold War is what put it there. Make no mistake, this is not a war film- this is an anti-war film. Dr. Strangelove is definitely a must-see for any Kubrick fan and film lover alike.

--Shelly