"Countdown to Zero" (2010)

[agate]

"Countdown to Zero" (2010)

This documentary about nuclear weapons is meant to pack a wallop, and it does. The point is that nuclear weapons should be outlawed.

People have been saying that almost since I can remember anything. But now maybe they're trying harder to make it happen, or some of them are.

This movie just might help, but as I watched it I kept thinking of "Kuroi ame," a Japanese movie about some survivors of Hiroshima.There we were shown what sort of lives people had just after the blast. We were shown what Hiroshima and its people actually looked like.

I was waiting for something like that in this movie, but maybe that would have been too graphic to attract much of an audience. Instead, there are detailed descriptions of what would happen in a nuclear blast.

Probably equally effective, but I do have one small quibble. The detailed description, which comes toward the end of the film, goes by too fast. Different narrators rattle off different probable effects of a nuclear explosion.

We might have seen fewer shots of the cylinders of HEU or whatever the stuff is that is so common that just about anyone in the world can make a nuclear bomb if he sets his mind to it.

One problem with a movie showing lots and lots of rockets and bombs being fired is that youngsters (and many adults) find them thrilling to watch.

I wonder if the movie's emphasis on showing bomb blasts was a bit misplaced, given the alleged purpose of the movie. People are impressed by this display of power. They eat it up. They cheer it on. They are shown cheering it on.

I also wonder about the presence of persons like Zbigniew Brzezinski and Richard Burt in this film. Tony Blair as well. I have a feeling that part of the point of this movie is to scare people about the threat of terrorism. There is some footage of Osama bin Laden, for instance, looking fit as a fiddle and all too impressive.

But if the point is that anyone can make a nuclear bomb with enough power to destroy a city, then, yes, terrorists are a threat. But we knew that before, didn't we? Haven't we known that all along?

It is good to have it emphasized again, however. It can't be emphasized enough. And, as one line in the movie has it, "You want to smuggle a nuclear bomb into the US? Hide it in a truck of kitty litter."
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MS diagnosed 1980.

Avonex 2002-2005. Copaxone 2007-2010.