1990 war, dir. Jack Sholder, Powers Boothe, Rebecca de Mornay:
IMDb. Terrorists fire a
nuclear missile into the USSR. Things get worse.
Yes, this is indeed an adaptation of the execrable Trinity's
Child (which I have previously reviewed). And it is frankly rather
better.
Though the first thing that strikes me is how much I immediately find
the look locking me into the feel of "1980s-1990s tv movie". This was
shown first on HBO, and there's something about the shooting style
that seems to tie it to that era, though I can't pin down exactly
what. I do rather suspect that this is the style that high-budget
television like Babylon 5 was trying to imitate.
And we get the bomber crew, and we get Strategic Air Command, but I
perk up when I see Martin Landau. All right, he's no Henry Fonda, but
I have never been disappointed with his playing of a part.
When you are a nuclear bomber crew, having just taken off from your
airbase in haste because a war seems to be starting, and there is a
very bright flash behind you, you do not say "what the hell was
that". You have been trained very hard to make a specific assumption
about what the hell that was (correctly, in this case).
Oh, look, a Token Black Child. Is he going to find the wounded
President? Why yes, yes he is.
Of course the film copies the book's error about submarine
communications (they had ELF receivers specifically so that they could
be sent any of a small selection of messages at any time). But
Prochnau who wrote the book was a journalist, these are film people,
and they're not trying for technical accuracy; they want to give
impressions like "the bomber is being attacked" and "the bomber is
safe for now" without having the crew read the lines, and on that
basis I suppose I must grudgingly accept that it works.
There's nothing that amazes me here. But there are some very fine
performances, particularly from Landau and James Earl Jones. It's just
a shame that de Mornay's character ends up doing all the emotional
heavy lifting, presumably on the basis of being female. And that the
story of the bomber really doesn't matter once they've made the
decision to turn back.
I talk about this film further on
Ribbon of Memes.