Plausible story.

Rating: 10/10 (28 January 2012)

This movie is both hilarious and chilling, hilarious because of the caricatures of real people it portrays, and the pomposity of power, and chilling because of the story's plausibility. A depraved psychopath launches a nuclear strike, putting the whole world at risk,, and the group charged with the task of heading off total destruction includes a Nazi, a warmonger, a president with no real power and drunk Soviet premier. One may dismiss such a scenario as mere literary hyperbole, but sadly, such characters do exist. When the president learns that his authority has been circumvented, he is powerless to do anything about it, revealing that the presidency itself is a sham and that there is no way to prevent a cataclysmic catastrophe. All the safeguards are revealed to be mere window dressing that are meant to lull the public into believing that a disaster could never happen. This movie includes many scenes that provoke laughter, but it is laughter that masks the truth which is that the whole world is at risk.
This is a classic movie because it deals with themes that transcend time and are applicable to the human condition. This movie is about the imperfections of people and how these imperfections can create huge problems. It is also about what can happen when people engage in brinkmanship, using weapons of mass destruction as leverage. Things can spiral out of control quickly and irreversibly. Some characterize this movie as a so-called black comedy. But there is nothing funny about the story, unless one feels that caricatures of people in varying degrees of regressive personal self-destruction is amusing. This movie shows what happens when people entrusted with safeguarding the nation really don't know what they are doing and the act in bad faith to try to cover their failures. This is most apparent in the role played by George C. Scott whose performance is brilliant. He captures the essence of a senior general who is is little more than a dilettante in a uniform and has nothing to offer to resolve the crisis, of which he is partly to blame, and knows it. This movie is effective precisely because its story is so plausible, and no amount of diligence can guarantee that something awful and catastrophic can be prevented. The human factor simply defies that kind of control.