Deterrence

I had seen the trailer for this movie a couple of months back, before the events of the last month, and I knew then that I wanted to see the movie. This weekend, I watched it and was shocked at how amazing it was.

Almost paralleling the events of the past couple of months, in the film, the current President (Pollock) must deal with rising problems with North Korea, and the sudden invasion of Kuwait by Saddam's son, who is the current military leader of Iraq. Finding his hands tied, the President issues a warning to the Iraqi leader: leave Kuwait and power down your weapons of mass destruction, within two hours, or else you and your city will be hit with a nuclear bomb.

After this threat, the film does into high pressure tension mode. Will the President keep his promise? Is he bluffing? And what is going to happen if he does use a nuclear bomb against his enemies?

Trust me, this is a film that will NOT disappoint.

Deterrence is one of those small little films that leaves a huge impression. Like The War at Home, a post-Vietnam war drama starring Emilio Estevez, Deterrence received a very minor release, but will end up being one of the year's best films. Kevin Pollak (The Usual Suspects, Grumpy Old Men) stars as the President of the United States. Pollak, however, was not elected, but was appointed Vice President and then took over after the death of the President. Forced to stay in a Colorado diner because of a blizzard, Pollak and his 2 most trusted assistants, played by Timothy Hutton (Ordinary People, Playing God) and Sheryl Lee Ralph (Bogus, White Man's Burden) find out about an illegal invasion into Kuwait by Sadaam Hussein's son. After some thought Pollak goes on National Television and announces a deadline for Hussein to leave or Pollak will drop a nuclear bomb on Baghdad. The whole film takes place inside this diner and relies on the tension that builds up as they get closer and closer to the deadline and as Pollak has to weigh his decision hearing arguments from both sides. The film is fascinating thanks to a strong amount of tension built up as we truly wonder what is going to happen. Hutton and Ralph are both solid as the 2 assistants, but the film belongs to Pollak and his strong lead performance. Highly recommended.

Overall, the film is pretty good for a low budget FAIL SAFE set in a diner, though I have to admit that I'm glad I saw it on a screening video rather than on the big screen. It plays well, as a good made for cable movie, but not as a big screen feature. The entire film is set in one interior location with the only visual images of the outside world coming from television broadcasts that the characters watch in the diner. A film can be done well shot in one location, as Hitchcock proved, but writer/director Rod Lurie isn't quite up to the challenge and the film sometimes feels sluggish. The film opens with a montage of clips of speeches by former presidents, and one future fictitious one, decrying war, intercut with a view of Earth from space, as the opening credits come up. For some pretentious reason the first five minutes of the film, setting up the support characters in the diner, is shot in black and white and only switches to color with the entrance of the president (Pollak) and his entourage. The locals who inhabit this Diner are one-dimensional stereotypes. There is the weathered and wise old black cook, the ignorant racist trucker, and the dizzy French Canadian waitress. We only know that she's French Canadian because one of the patrons identifies her accent, though her accent shifts back and forth from Southern drawl to a Midwest (Fargo) accent. The film would have been a lot better had these characters been erased from the screenplay all together. Perhaps it had to be set in a diner because the budget couldn't cover a war room or White House set. The crisis story is believable and much of the dialogue between the president and his advisors is well written. Timothy Hutton, as the president's old friend and advisor, has a nice short monologue about the Los Alamos tests and the destruction of Baghdad that does more to evoke the scale of the situation than anything else in the film does. To be fair to the film, I watched it a twice before jotting this down. There was a twist at the end of the film that I thought was out of place the first time I saw it that made sense upon my second viewing. The president has an ace up his sleeve and I thought it was preposterous that he would hold back information from his staff just so the film could surprise the audience at the end. But on second viewing I saw where he advises his staff off screen away from the other characters. Stock footage is used often, and usually pretty well, during the news reports that come into the diner. Though sometimes they should have avoided using stock footage all together. (An F117 is not a B2 bomber and the detonation footage from the Bikini Atoll has been used a thousand times already and detracts from the emotional impact of the moment) It's a fairly clever script that would do well, minus some of the support characters, as a one-act play. It's definitely worth renting when it comes out on video. As for seeing it in the theaters…it's good to see studios like Paramount putting out small original films like this…but I wish it could have been done better for the big screen.

I must admit I had to see the film twice to appreciate all the detail that was included. This is one man's vision, Rod Lurie, since he wrote, directed and produced the film and the more that I watch it, the more I appreciate what was done. The problem with this type of film is that most people will not be able to give it the attention it deserves.

I can't complain about the casting or the acting, since the actors stayed true to the vision of the film. The story is riveting and full of surprises and with a fine touch of comic relief. The most interesting thing for me about the film is that it's completely relevant for today (2002), which is when I discovered it.

Don't watch this with your significant other when you want to snuggle. It's disturbing, engrossing and most definitely provocative.

This 1999 film features an appointed Vice President who assumes Presidential power upon the death of the President -- ergo, a completely unelected President. Interesting concept but more importantly, the basic plot has this President forced to face a major crisis in Iraq when all of his diplomatic and military power is concentrated on a crisis in Korea. Somebody must be reading this script in Washington right now -- but they switched the locations.

At any rate, all of the ranting negative reviews and the flowery positive reviews I have seen here on IMDB about this film seem to me to miss the point. What happens in the film is of limited note compared to very strange feeling of "deja now" watching this film in February, 2003 while watching its big brother on CNN live. See this film! It's interesting, a bit disturbing, and sightly prescient (only partially I hope).