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Countdown to Zero
Countdown to Zero will make you want to walk straight from the theater into a fallout shelter, which basically means it’s doing its job. A look at another inconvenient truth, the film lays out how easy it is to acquire, build or steal a nuclear weapon. Uranium is ubiquitous, the technology is no longer the stuff of Ivory Tower labs, security could never be tight enough and rogue states aren’t exactly in short supply. The only answer, the film argues, is international disarmament—a prospect the movie finally addresses at the end, long after most viewers will have written off the human race.
Solutions probably should have been Walker’s focus, as no one needs to be repeatedly reminded of the ways an atom bomb could be misused. (A disclaimer: The studio provided a slightly unfinished version of the film.) Making duck-and-cover reels look as soothing as airline-safety videos, Walker hails from the Errol Morris School of Documentary Unease, combining useful illustrative graphics with genuinely unnerving interviews. We’re told Boris Yeltsin saved the planet by keeping his cool when an underling failed to relay that a U.S. rocket launch was exclusively for scientific purposes, and a computer glitch during the Carter administration almost caused America to blow a hole in the globe. The talking heads include scientists, former heads of state (Tony Blair, Mikhail Gorbachev) and intelligence experts (including an especially alarming Valerie Plame Wilson). All agree on the danger. Who couldn’t?
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