Fail Safe - Special Edition

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic!!
Review: I've seen this movie at least 10 times, always on late night TV, and it still gets me every time. Right up until the last minute your'e hoping that all will turn out well, but of course it doesn't. It's curtains for 1964 New York, with it's World's Fair, Ed Sullivan, the Peppermint Lounge and My Fair Lady. Previously Moscow of course meets a simular horrible fate. But what a fantastic movie, full of drama and suspense. I'll never forget the reaction when the first plane is shot down, and the man who reminds them "That wer'e not at a football match" There are so many powerful scenes throughout the movie, too many to list here. It deserved a lot better recognition that what it got at the time. See it!

Rating:
Summary: A stunning Cold War era suspense thriller sure to shock.
Review: "Duck and cover" was the phrase most baby boomers came to know as the signal that nuclear disaster was near. After the Cuban missle crisis, America and her enemy--the Soviets--came to be on pins and needles. In Fail Safe, those fears are played on to great effect. An American SAC bomber is erroneously given instructions to carry out its well practiced mission: proceed to target (Moscow) and drop its payload of hydrogen weapons. The desperate moves by the American president to turn back the bomber, his subsequent decision to place American populations at equal risk to avoid all-out war, and the gut wrenching final moments which leave this viewer literally in tears, all conspire to make this film experience one you'll not soon forget.

Rating:
Summary: Really worth having in your collection
Review: I'll never forget my reaction the first time viewing Fail Safe when the US Ambassador in Moscow describes the flash from an atomic blast. Good story, aside from its preachy anti-war passages proven wrong by history, great acting and all in the B&W format. Good performances from Larry Hagman and of all people, Dom Deluise! Henry Fonda's President is terrific.

Rating:
Summary: fantastic and extremely frightening
Review: Bizarrely, this film was made and released about the exact same time, and with pretty much the exact same theme, as the more popular "Dr. Strangelove or How to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb."

"Dr. Strangelove" took a wonderful and hilarious (but still pretty frightening) approach to the material. "Fail-safe" was dead serious. (There's no music, for instance.) I like them both, for different reasons.

Specifically, "Fail-safe" is one of the most frightening movies i've ever seen. Hopefully the ending hasn't been given away if you haven't seen it yet (it probably has), but it is terrifying and nausea inducing.

So basically, don't let "Dr. Strangelove" throw you off from seeing "Fail-safe," which is one of the best movies of its type i have ever seen.

Rating:
Summary: Unmatched terror of Damocles
Review: No other movie brings back that terror we felt in those days where the madness of mutually assured destruction was the only thread of assurance we seemed to have. It may be argued that the possibility of nuclear anihilation has not gone away but we sem to seldom think of it as we did in those days at the height of the cold war. And never will there be a movie with such a shocking end that leaves you with that terror at what might have been. It is a masterpiece of dramatic suspense.

Rating:
Summary: A nightmarish drama !
Review: After Dr,. Strangelove , only two films are worthy to remark : Fail Safe and Seven days of May.

The opening shots shows us bull baiting : allusive metaphor of what ii will come . Due to a crucial error ,a SAC plane is ordered to bomb Moscow . The awful mess once you opened the Pandora box is still to come .

The final sequence is impeccable . the multiple shots and the elusive perception of the vanishing time until finally stops has been few times shown with so merciless anguish .

A solid cast confers this work a high historic status .

One of the best films of Sidney Lumet.


Rating:
Summary: The Sword of Damocles
Review: In 1963 Columbia Studio had a bad bout of cognitive dissidence. They were developing two projects that were like fraternal twins, DR. STRANGELOVE and FAIL SAFE; both based on best selling novels. Stanley Kubrick, who wrote and directed DR. STRANGELOVE, threatened to quit, or sue everyone in sight. Columbia decided to release STRANGELOVE first. This was a bonehead political decision, not an artistic one. Kubrick had decided that the subject of nuclear holocaust was too intense to present in a straight dramatic fashion, so he created a classic farce out of it. In retropect we can see STRANGELOVE is a comedy classic, but I would submit that the audiences, the world of 1964 needed a good dose of drama, of grim pessimism, of unclouded ascerbic rhetoric, and more awareness of how close we were to the brink, and to the haphazardness of accidental and total nuclear destruction.

FAIL SAFE was shot in black and white, starkly lit, and presented to us like a short jab to the solar plexus. It has been called a "Cold War film noir", and it certainly was that. It's plot hook was clarion; through a series of human and computer errors, an American squadron of Vindicator bombers would lose contact with SAC, and would end up flying past the "fail-safe" zone, and head into enemy territory by mistake. The pilots were trained to disregard all radio transmissions. Ed Binns did a fine job of playing the pilot, Major Jack Grady. So even when the President got through to him, and his own wife was put on the horn, he switched them off, and proceeded toward his top secret target--Moscow.

Sidney Lumet directed this film. He had a reputation for being a director with a lot of technical knowledge, nurtured for decades while doing live drama on televsion during the Golden Age of the 1950's. He also was known as a director who could get top notch performances from his cast. He was applauded as an "Actor's Director." He, also, had an extensive career working as an actor on Broadway, and before that in Yiddish theatre. He believed in rehearsing the material, and this paid off with solid performances from the entire cast.

Walter Matthau played Professor Groeteschele. This was a complex role. The character had to be Kissinger on crack, a civilian defense consultant who believed in probabilites and percentages and America striking first. He has always been very effective in dramatic roles, even though he is mostly remembered for his comedic ones. Henry Fonda as the President was excellent. He was so good, we wished he could have really been President, rather than say an actor like Ronald Reagan. Fonda displayed just the right amount of humanity, strength, humility, and heart. He pulled it off magnificently.

Fonda was helped immensily by Larry Hagman, playing Buck, the interpreter. Before he dreamed of Jeannie, before he monogrammed J.R. on his lapel, he was just this skinny bright-eyed kid who could act; showing subtlety and compassion. My favorite character was Brig. General Warren Black, played by Dan O'Herlihy. He represented the voice of reason, the good man immersed in a bad situation. He was an old school chum of the President's, who called him "Blackie". When the President decided to sacrifice NYC as a token of our sorrow for nuking Moscow, it was Blackie he had to trust to drop the payload; even though the First Lady, and Black's family were in town.

FAIL SAFE as a film came at you like a rocket sled; relentless, austere, unblinking, and graphic. There was no comic relief, and no musical score. The message was crystal clear. It was an uncompromising vision illustrating the folly of our total reliance on machines at a time when even the slightest error in human judgement, or computer logic, would have catastrophic results. This really is the best Cold War film ever made.

Rating:
Summary: Cold War Classic
Review: This is an outstanding movie, with probably the best ending of any movie I've ever seen. It's a chilling story from the Cold War (no pun intended). A group of bombers is sent toward Russia in response to an unidentified object showing up on the radar. By the time they figure out that the object was harmless, it's too late to recall the bombers.

The President is working with his military advisors and the Russians to try to stop a nuclear war, and the solution they come up with in the end is pretty amazing.

Henry Fonda plays the president and does a great job, as always.

One other thing about the movie that's actually kind of funny is how primitive the computer equipment looked, and how they talk about it being the most advanced technology available.

Rating:
Summary: A Study in Frantic
Review: I was initially annoyed that this film is in b&w. Judging by the slip-jacket art, one would believe this film to be in color. I was initially annoyed that this film seemed like it would be just another computer gone berserk tale. Judging by the description on the back of the box, one would believe this film would be more sophisticated than that. Saints be. In b&w it should, and sophisticated it is. The two world leaders have a problem: an American accident, and a Soviet accident, have put into motion a series of events that can only end in Armagedon unless they think of something fast. A Soviet radio jamming device, leads an American Bomber Squad to believe they are to Nuke Moscow. Nobody can make them stop. When Moscow is destroyed, how should thier leadership respond? 'Accidents will happen'. If we kill 5 million Soviets, and contaminate hundreds of thier square miles for thousands of years, how should we apologize? How can we level the playing field? Moscow is thier greatest city. We've accidently destroyed it. Why should they believe it was an accident? What about our greatest city......?

Rating:
Summary: The sky is very bright, all lit up --
Review: "Fail Safe" must have been even stronger during its release in 1964 in the height of the cold war, just a year or two after the Cuban missile crisis. Even today in the 21st century, it still holds up well, and still is food for thought. Can a nuclear war be won? If it was accidentally started, how would you, as president, proceed? Your choice might not be the same as Henry Fonda's, but his does have some logic to it.

Filmed beautifully in black-and-white with strong lighting and photography, the movie features a long list of established or up-and-coming actors including Fonda as the president, Walter Matthau as the political scientist based on Herman Kahn, Ed Binns as a pilot, Dan O'Herlihy as the peace-seeking general, Fritz Weaver as the unbalanced Colonel, Larry Hagman as the interpreter for the president, and Dom DeLuise, Dana Elcar and Sorrell Booke in minor roles.

There are some blatant continuity problems caused by the total lack of support given by the military - no help with sets, stock footage, or any technical advice. There was even a disclaimer added to the end of the movie at the request of the studio.

Directed by Sidney Lumet who also directed "12 Angry Men", "Dog Day Afternoon", "Serpico", "Murder on the Orient Express" and "Network".

This film is inevitably compared to Stanley Kubrick's humorous treatment of the same theme in "Dr. Strangelove", also a 5-star movie. Apart from both being filmed in black-and-white and involving nuclear war with the Rooskie's, they are like night and day.

A director's commentary, a short "making of" featurette, some text-based minor goodies, and optional subtitles round out this DVD.

"The dream. The dream. The matador. The matador. The matador. Me!"