Doomsday Gun

Plot synopsis:
The young Catholic Gerald Bull is fascinated with large-bore guns, inspired by Jules Verne's novel From The Earth To The Moon. The adult Dr. Gerald Bull's career as a successful large-bore gun designer takes a turn as he is defunded by the U.S. Army; he then produces weapons for China, Israel, and ultimately South Africa which results in his arrest and conviction for illegal arms dealing.
After his release, Bull promotes his supergun idea to Saddam Hussein, and, with funding through BCCI, begins design work on the top secret project, "Babylon". Bull solves several manufacturing challenges by forging and assembling it in sections which are bolted together by flanges, and lining the relatively soft barrel material with an alloy sleeve to reduce wear on the barrel. British and U.S. government agencies are shown to be aware of Bull's activities, but do nothing to stop him. The Israeli Mossad tries to dissuade Bull, and goes so far as to threaten his life, with no effect.
As the "Baby Babylon" version of the gun is assembled and tested successfully horizontally in Iraq, Bull's second in command, Cowley, quits after a roadside run-in with Mossad agent Dov, who also shadowed Bull. The Iraqis demand an additional, 45-degree, test of the prototype gun, using threats to coerce Bull into compliance. That completed test firing results in a direct hit on a target 100 miles away, and Bull brags that the full size "Babylon" gun can fire "ten times as far."
As production of the full-size sections of the gun continues in England and elsewhere, falsely documented as oil pipeline parts in order to evade export restrictions, the film depicts increasing threats to Bull's life from Saddam, and the Mossad agent Dov. Agent Dov notes that assassination of Bull will happen one way or another as he has too many enemies and not many friends. A threat to Iran, the Iraqis due to his knowing too much, Syrians, and the Saudis. An embarrassment and liability to the UK and there is also the US. As the gun nears completion, Bull, while returning home, is gunned down at his apartment, where his body is discovered by his wife.
The end text crawl states that Dr. Bull's murder was unsolved, and that the U.S. contributed over $3 billion to Iraq in the years preceding the first Gulf War.

Tags: flashback

Review:
I enjoyed this movie because I can vaguely remember the circumstances surrounding his death and the noticeable lack of attention paid to it in Canada.
The story is interesting and the character study is fascinating.
I thought that Frank Langella was right for the role.
Not only is he relatively unknown by Hollywood standards, he is also Canadian.
This is a case where a man's dream to build the biggest and best arms overrides his sense of morality.He was willing to sell his technology to anyone regardless of how it would be used.
He wasn't interested in profit - it was all in the interest of personal aggrandizement.
The movie probably could have been better (at least in the glitzy Hollywood sense) but the story is told in a fairly straightforward and interesting manner allowing the viewer to decide for him/herself about ends versus means..
Just a quibble to correct Jonathan from Hoboken's identification of Gerry Bull as an America.
He was Canadian (you can even see him brandishing his Canadian passport in the final airport scene with Price (Spacey) near the end.) Gerry Bull was an inconvenient Canadian, in that he thought too big for a Canadian, and, like many other Canadians of talent and vision,  eventually had to leave the country to achieve what he wanted.
He was a brilliant supersonic aerodynamics engineer, who had contributed to the Avro Arrow program, and had run HARP (High Altitude Research Program) which had been, ahem, aimed at achieving spaceflight using guns, a la Jules Verne.
It had operated the original 'supergun' in the Caribbean, with battleship guns put end to end.
Bull gave up on Canada when Canada gave up on him, and that's when he became the international long-range artillery guy, selling his expertise to whoever paid - Israel, South Africa, Iraq.
I figure if Israel could knock out Saddam's Osirak nuclear plant with an air strike, it wouldn't be past them to knock off the guy about to give Saddam a supergun with which to shell Tel Aviv.The movie, though heavy on the CIA-is-the-root-of-all-evil conspiracy theories, was entertaining and not that bad, especially as a made-for-TV job, with, I thought,  pretty good casting (I always like Michael Kitchen)..
Another good example of how a tv movie can, perhaps within bland and low-cost production values, be more interesting and truthful than the standard Hollywood film.Another respondent has described how well the film captures the creative moment within engineering, and that's all true.
I think Langella's performance was also an excellent representation of a buccaneering businessman, drawing about him intelligent people he trusts and inspiring them, although occasionally haranguing them.Good scenes ..
Gerald Bull dining on the grave of a famous German artilleryman.
The Israeli spy chief walking morosely around the Baghdad arms fair looking at all the hardware he would one day have to face.
The nods and winks of the British establishment as they turn a blind eye to the production of Saddam's supergun.Yes it clunks here and there.
But fine acting and a literate script.
More absorbing than most films which cost 10 times as much.Seven out of ten..
As an engineer's son, I have never seen a better portrayal of an engineer's enthusiasm for new problems and new challenges.
In one unforgettable scene, Frank Langella brought to the screen for the first time in my opinion what can only be called, "the-joy-of-development." Too often films that deal with invention focus on that moment when the problem comes together and is solved.
What they fail to recognize is the first step, when the men and women are looking at the challenge ahead has even more emotional potential.
Thankfully the writers and actors in this film did not forget this human truth.The cast is excellent.
The script is uneven, but the only reason this is obvious is because instead of staying mildly good throughout, like most made for cable films, this movie is mildly good with occasional scenes of brilliance.
If you are an engineer or just have one as a friend or member of the family, see this film.
Another excellent made-for-TV movie.
This is as good a spy thriller as I have seen in a long time.
The icing on the cake is, it also happens to be true!This movie is short on action, short on special effects, explosions, car chases and the likes; this is a movie with a great script (true life is the best writer I have ever known), it is intelligently made, well directed and acted.
All of the protagonists are excellent, but special mention is due to Alan Arkin in my opinion, whose portrayal of a cynical spy is Oscar worthy.
James Fox has a cameo as the Head of MI6, he is also perfect in his role and seems to be amusing himself greatly while playing it.It would be very interesting to learn the whole truth about this story one day....
Fact based spy vs.
spy ........
Interesting fact based spy film with supposed allies backstabbing each other, each with their own agenda for using an engineer's gigantic gun he is developing.
The long range implications for Middle East Countries is factored against the region's importance as an oil producer.
Profit and greed is offset by the scientific drive of one man, who's vision is well beyond the present, possibly offering him the immortal recognition he desires.
This is well acted, fast paced, and intriguing.
The miniatures and computer renderings of the big guns are superbly done, and the film is relevant even with all the time that has passed.
I found this to be very interesting.
The acting was good and the story made you wonder: would you do the same thing?
After watching this, I was reminded that so many of the nations that hate us, we have helped create.
As it said at the end "It is estimated that almost $3 million dollars of taxpayer money was sent to Iraq to arm them".
The United States creates these monsters and then ends up having to face them.
By arming the rebels who eventually became the Taliban, It became the mistake that came back and bite us on the ass.
I really liked this movie..
One reviewer claimed that the idea of a Supergun was impractical due to the huge flame that could easily be observed from satellites, and that such a gun would take days to clean out and reload.This is not correct.A supergun can work, and is no more impractical than a fixed airbase or missile launch site.The German superguns did work, and many rounds were fired both in testing and operationally - at Luxembourg.Iran would have had difficulty destroying a firing site.
Its ground attack capability was not good, and the gun itself would be a small target.
Flames could not be seen from space, even if Iran did have a satellite over Iraq at the time of firing.It would also have been an ideal weapon with which to launch projectiles against the state of Israel..
This movie sets out to tell the (more or less) true story of Canadian weapons designer Gerald Bull (Frank Langella), who dreams of building the world's most powerful artillery gun: hundreds of feet long and able to deliver a shell the size of a small building.
America and Great Britain don't want to finance his masterpiece and don't want Bull constructing one for anybody else.
But Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is willing to pay for one, and able to get around the American embargo on selling weapons to Iraq by cleverly disguising the gun's parts as ordinary industrial equipment.
But once Bull goes to work for Saddam, he sets himself as a target for international hit squads willing to do anything to keep such a weapon out of the wrong hands.
He found himself playing cat-and-mouse, taking precautions to stay one step ahead of the world's intelligence agencies.
This movie provides a pretty good reconstruction of the project, and the fact that the project was a quite chilling possibility gives the story much of its interest.
Unlike the outlandish schemes of James Bond's usual adversaries, Bull's supergun was technically feasible and his customer, Saddam, was a very real threat to world peace.
A decent way to pass the time for anybody looking for real life intelligence intrigue..
Couldve been better.
Frank Langella stars as Dr Gerald Bull who wishes to sell a giant "doomsday"gun to a non US friendly third world nation.
Obviously this doesnt sit well with a few people..
An OK movie but Langella seems lost in the role, a bit miscast, and the story doesnt hold interest like it should 6 of 10.
The only reason I watched this film, was because my favorite actor Kevin Spacey was in it.
The film was a disappointment, but Spacey had some good moments, despite the fact that he was clearly miscast.This was also the case for Frank Langella as the inventor, who is so obsessed by his inventions that he gets himself in danger.Tony Goldwyn(GHOST, TARZAN) too wasn't the man for the part of tough CIA-boss.
The only exceptions were Edward Fox(however, this was a case of type-casting)and Alan Arkin.
The story too was very uneven and it seemed as though it wasn't finished at all.
The actors do what they can, but they too can't make THIS material work.
I Could've been really good.
I've read a book about the super gun ,and the man behind it.(Can't remember if it was fiction or biography)But I find they portray of him in this film,extremely naive.
They go to great lengths to portray him as a big child,who just wanna realize his dream, of building the biggest gun ever.If it was meant as a kid movie that might have worked out well.
But since this a movie for adult about real events(though I'm sure they've taken huge liberties with the truth)And he has worked with agency's all over the world,he seem quite willfully ignorant of the threat they are to him.
He just goes on and on, about how wonderfully it will be that his invention works.He seem to have no conception of how dangerous it will be, that Saddam wanna brag and show off a model of this doomsday cannon, on a international public arms convention.
Even though he knows the people after him are quite serious about stopping him.
The fact that America in the movie, think they can decate Israel is kind of amusing.
A boring and crappy made for tv by tv movie..
There is nothing good in this movie, at all!
There is nothing good in this movie, at all!
People reffering to themselves as gingerbread men, and wanting to fire "superguns" and filming iraq in nevada and just murdering the good name of Kevin Spacey in this...
Its just bad!Kevin was misplaced, he wasn't supposed to be in this movie, at all!.
The Doomsday Gun: A Review.
There are many under-appreciated gems and "The Doomsday Gun" is one of them.
Based on a true story, the Doomsday Gun is about Gerald Bull, a Canadian engineer who tries to build the largest gun in the world (capable of shooting mortar shells 1000 miles away) and then sell it to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein who was at the time at war with Iran.
The U.S. and British governments soon find out that Bull is up to no good, but they decide not to stop him because they mistakenly believe that the gun cannot be built.But the film is really about Gerald Bull.
Gerald Bull (played brilliantly by Frank Langella) is portrayed as arrogant, mercurial and a genius.
He never allows his people to sleep until he discovers the answer to a problem.
Above all, he is a dreamer who sees his gun as a work of art.
There is a fascinating paradox in this movie between genius and the devastating implications of it.
When Albert Einstein's developed his ideas about atoms, he had no idea that those ideas would result in the creation of an atomic bomb that, when dropped, would cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.
Gerald Bull, unlike Einstein, should have known his gun could have killed thousands and yet he approaches the whole matter with a naive innocence or maybe he simply does not care, because -- as he explains to his wife -- the world is messed up already.
As the film progresses, Bull becomes so obsessed with building the gun that he loses sight of everything else, including the distinct possibility that he is putting his own life in greater danger with every passing day.
There is a lot to dislike in Gerald Bull, but Frank Langella's portrayal of him is so effective that we end up sympathizing with the man all the same.
Part of us even wants him to succeed, because we understand how important that dream is to him.Other good performances in the film come from Michael Kitchen as Christopher Cowley, who assisted Bull in designing the gun before backing out because he believed the project was putting his own life in greater danger; Tony Goldwyn (Donald Duval) and Kevin Spacey (Jim Price) as American spies; Alan Arkin (Colonel Yossi)and Clive Owen (Dov) as Israel spies; Roger Hammond in a wonderful, but brief, performance as the gun dealer Mackler; and Aharon Ipale (Marouf) and Zia Mohyeddin (Hashim) as the Iraqis who commissioned Bull to build the gun.
An interesting look at recent mid east history.
I saw "Doomsday Gun" a few days ago and I enjoyed it very much.
Frank Langella stars as Dr. Gerry Bull an american engineer who designs weapons.
His latest clients are the Iraqi government who want him to build a giant gun which will be able to launch a missle 1,000 miles.
****Possible Spoilers****** Kevin Spacey and Alan Arkin co star as two spies intent on not letting this project get off the ground.
Spacey as a CIA operative and Arkin as an Israeli agent who may or may not have had Bull murdered to prevent the Iraqis from launching missles at Israel.
The character of Bull is interesting.
On one hand he is a weapons seller who is going to build a giant gun for Saddam Hussein, a madman and tyrant.
He explains that no matter which government he would work for they are all guilty of murder.
On the other hand, Bull is an engineer who just wants to build his dream gun which will provide his legacy.
Langella really puts a human face on this man in a very understated performance.
Spacey and Arkin are good too as spies trying for the same goal but with completely different methods of achieving them.
Over all an interesting movie and very relavent to today's climate in the middle east with war looming.
The main flaw in the movie, I think was that the director got caught up in Bull's dream too.
(The idea that the Supergun was a practical weapon) Bull could never really solve the single firing only problem.
Firing would have produced a huge flame easily observed from Satellites.
Such a gun firing would take days to clean out and reload.
Less time than strike aircraft would need to go in, and destroy it.I doubt Mossad killed Bull, for there were many around the world working on considerably more practical weapons for Saddam who went untouched, for example, Frenchmen and Germans working on nuclear weapons, Germans and Spainiards on chemical, and Brazilians on missiles.
I also doubt the CIA did it, Bull being a US citizen, in a NATO country, after the reforms of the CIA in the 1970's.I'd point the finger at Iraq, as Yosi said "Saddam Hussein is the only man in Iraq allowed to know too much".
From 1994 to 2007 the meaning has completely changed.
This is an old film that came out in 1994.
It was direct propaganda from the Democrats against the Republicans and Bush Senior who had been defeated by Clinton in 1992.
As such it revealed the very obscure and twisted policies the United States of Reagan and Bush Senior had had towards Iraq, Iran, Israel and the Middle East in general, not to speak of the world.
In retrospect it shows how the US produced their own enemy and made him as strong as strong could be, how they helped him embezzle enormous sums of money in order to pay for some armament projects that were totally out of proportion but very good for business.
And they had to lie to the whole world to justify their unilateral decision to invade Iraq.
And that war that was supposed to be a joyride because they knew there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction and hence the Iraqis could not resist them, has turned into a nightmare and a quagmire that is swallowing the US like a quicksand trap in the middle of their only way.
The Indians and Sinhalas have an interested saying about how an elephant cannot escape from drowning in a pool of mud as soon as they have dipped their first foot in it.
If the film demonstrates something it is that when you lie, when you embezzle, when you manipulate people or events or circumstances or whatever, sooner or later you have to pay the bill and foot the expenses.
Unluckily the price is paid by the Americans first of all, then by the Iraqis particularly the civilians, and finally by the whole world that is forced into dangerous situations that could and should have been avoided.
This film's meaning has completely changed from 1994 with Bush Senior as its intended target to Bush Junior as an unintended circumstantial target.
But one element is still true and unchanged: the US have been fishing in very muddy waters over the last twenty years or so and the price to pay will be unimaginably high for everyone.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne