Starring: Henry Fonda, Walter Matthau, Fritz Weaver, Dan O'Herlihy, Frank Overton Directed By: Sidney Lumet Average Rating: Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Audience Rating: Unrated Binding: DVD Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD, Letterboxed, Special Edition, Widescreen, NTSC Number of Items: 1 Region Code: 99 Release Date: October 31, 2000 Running Time: 112 minutes Studio: Sony Pictures Theatrical Release Date: October 07, 1964
Product Description: A computer malfunction sets off the events which could result in a nuclear war when a bomber is set to destroy Moscow and the President has to destroy New York in retaliation. Genre: Feature Film-Drama Rating: UN Release Date: 31-OCT-2000 Media Type: DVD
Amazon.com essential video: It's Dr. Strangelove, but without the laughs. Fail Safe, made within a year of Strangelove and at the height of cold war atomic anxiety, posits a similar nightmare scenario. A U.S. bomber is accidentally ordered toward Moscow, ready to drop its load. The U.S. president (Henry Fonda) and various military and congressional leaders must then scramble to deal with the disaster. The built-in suspense is well maintained by director Sidney Lumet, working from a script by former blacklisted writer Walter Bernstein. The solemn, serious approach doesn't begin to touch the brilliance of Strangelove's inspired take on the nuclear nightmare, but Fail Safe is absorbing and well acted (a memorable role for Walter Matthau, for instance). The movie enters unexpected territory in its final minutes; conditioned for feel-good endings, viewers are still genuinely shocked by the plot turns in the final reels. The climax comes as a sobering slap in the face, intriguingly staged by Lumet. Now that the cold war has passed on into history, Fail Safe stands as--thank goodness--an interesting period piece. --Robert Horton
CAPTURED THE MOOD OF THE TIME ^ A very somber, dark movie which captured the mood of the time with regard to a nuclear holocost. America was very frightened that nuclear war was a real possiblity which was reflected in many of the movies and books of the time.
classic ^ Could nuclear war happen on accident. This was always a fear of John F. Kennedy after he read Barbara Tuckman'sThe Guns of August. He obsessed about this after his ill-fated 1961 Vienna Summit with Nikita Khrucshev, and it almost hapened during the Cuban Missle Crisis in October of 1962.
Kennedy was smart enough to avert this, but that standoff made the possibility real for Americans. I have said this in other reviews, but if you are my age, born in 1969, you caught the tail and far less dangerous end of the cold war.
But from the end of World War II until the end of the Missle Crisis, the unthinkable was quite thinkable, every day. I collect Time Magazines from the 1950s and 1960s, and you could sent away for a backyard bomb shelter as we now do for books, CDs and computer eqiptment.
If you think of those first few months after 9/11, during the anthrax attacks, this is probably the closest people of my era have ever gotten to how palpable this fear was.
Fail-Safe from 1964 shows just how easy accidental incineration could have been. Two American pilots misread radio messages and start flying into Western Russia to unload the bomb. It takes awhile for the people in the military to understand what is going on. The pilots are called back , eventually, even by President Henry Fonda. But it is too late. There are a series of orders and checks that go horribly wrong--the steps meant to avoid error wind up causing the worst error of all.
This is war by massive systematic error and blind obeidance to systematic proceadure. The pilots are following orders, but orders of a regimine that does not reveal its flaws until it actually is activated.
Fail-Safe is no scinence fiction horror show. Directed by the great Sidney Lumet--if I could do reviews like he did films, I would be trouncing Harriet right now, but she has nothing to worry about --it shows the doves, moderates, hawks (Walter Matthau) and crazies (Fritz Weaver) all trying to influence Fonda, in his calm and centered playing of the president. (This could be any president. He is not meant to be LBJ, in office when Fail Safe hit screens.)
All the acting is great, but I really have to single out Matthau--he got his big name doing comady, but he plays an amazingly creepy hawk here, who thinks this crisis is an oppotunity to win the cold war. His charactor is cold, calcualting, and truely insane.
Does this mean anything now. Pakastan and India have nukes, and are hotbeds for Islamic Radicalism. Fail-safe is relevent now--you betcha./
An End of The World Scenario ^ I viewed parts of this movie as a younger person and have come to appreciate the great acting, story and challenges it presents. Highly recommend.
Fail-safe vs. Strangelove --- no contest! ^ I've never cared for DR. STRANGELOVE (1964), and Sidney Lumet's FAIL-SAFE is precisely the reason why. FAIL-SAFE is THE Cold War masterpiece, while its predecessor is a clumsy, unamusing and ill-advised Stanley Kubrick work. The chance of nuclear annihilation really exists and is not something to make light of.
In FAIL-SAFE, Henry Fonda is brilliant as President of the United States and Larry Hagman in only his second motion picture is equally superb. It's Hagman's job to interpret what the Soviet premier says to Fonda over the hotline as a group of American bombers with multiple 20 megaton bombs heads towards Moscow, but he must also give impressions of the Russian's feelings and intentions. It's grueling work, and knowing that humanity may be on the brink of extinction is clearly delineated by Hagman, who should've won a Supporting Actor Oscar for his efforts.
In fact, this remarkable drama did not receive a SINGLE Oscar nod.
Near story's end, tension and fear have built to the breaking point, then after an extended agony of suspense, Bang Bang Bang, like a champion boxer landing a trio of rapid-fire blows, events unfold one-two-three and everything ends in utter tragedy. The absolutely avoidable, unthinkable, impossible happens and following one final brilliant bit of quick multiple edits in a 20 second space, the screen goes black.
I was too young to see FAIL-SAFE at a theater, but can easily imagine the effect this ending had on audiences, for it honestly left me stunned. The contemplation of such horrific possibilities especially in these most hazardous times is enervating, sobering, depressing.
So if I have nothing but disdain for DR. STRANGELOVE, now you know WHY.
Parenthetical number preceding title is a 1 to 10 imdb viewer poll rating.
A Fear Unique to Our Age ^ Rather than echo the plaudits of the reviewers before me, all of which I am in full accord, I'd like to offer another observation.
The most frightening aspect of this movie is that it speaks of a mass fear that is specific to the last two or three generations. The fear of the willful destruction of all life on this planet through the technological method. Consider the kind of neurosis and fear that gripped the last three generations. A fear that any moment the whole of human society could be instantly incinerated. This fear has been a deciding factor in the unfolding of western culture since the end of WW2, and it would be a poor student or scholar of history who fails to see this.
I quote John Fowles (from The Magus):
"The threat of nuclear catastrophe had stimulated the economic production, ensured peace (to some extent), and provided a sense of real danger behind every moment of life. The result was an amoral era in which consumerist self-gratification against a backdrop of imminent doom produces entire populations of autoerotic and autopsychotic people. Economic isolation and psychological isolation from states of poverty and human suffering will be a norm. The result is men of moderate intelligence, little analytical power, and no science; coupled with the inadequacies of the pseudo statements of low-quality art and confused value judgments, utterly incapable of meeting their evolutionary roles. He has been launched into a world with no training in self-analysis and self-orientation; and almost all the education he received is positively harmful to him. He was born, so to speak, blinded by his environments; and cannot find his way."
This is the heritage of the nuclear age.
The movie, and indeed the source of its inspiration, imposes upon the whole of the human race a single question: are we wise enough to master ourselves and the power we now possess? Are we evolved enough to face the responsibilities that the momentum of human history has imposed upon us?
One thing we must face that is truly disturbing is this. Throughout the history of the world since 1945, nuclear war has been averted on several occasions. What one must ask is weather our leaders did so owing to a moral choice and a sense of responsibility to God and His human creation, or weather they were simply motivated by a desire to preserve their station? The practical upshot of this, from their point of view, is that nuclear war would end human society; and as a result, end their political power. From a purely political perspective, this would be a terribly irresponsible thing to allow. Yet, how does this affect the rest of humanity? Does this reduce the individual to a disposable commodity, a statistic devoid of all human and spiritual value? And even worse, how many human beings irregardless of station, rank, and ideology are, almost exclusively by choice and consent, truly below a level of such consideration?
Furthermore, how did humanity devolve to the point of using science and the subtitles of nature in such a horrible manner? What kind of human being could willingly build such devices? What corruption of mind and spirit could look at the world, its resources, and peoples, and say "If I cannot possess and control it, then nobody will!" Because that is, in stark reality, the statement that every nuclear weapon ultimately makes. And why do we willingly permit such people to run our governments, industries, militia, media, educational institutions, and economy?
"Fail Safe" forces these questions down our throats, and dares us to answer them honestly. That is, if we have the courage and honesty to do so. The candid answers to these questions should terrify us more than this movie ever could.
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