AlexPhillips is one of our most highly rated reviewers!

• 
• Countdown to Zero on DVD (2010)
  Director: Lucy Walker
  Certificate:
  This evening I attended the British premier of Countdown to Zero and found to film to be a deeply disappointing experience.
  
  However, lets begin with the positives, the film is well produced, is (largely) factually accurate and doesn't mince its words regarding the threat of nuclear terrorism. The big problem however, is that the film amounts to little more than scaremongering.
  
  The first third covers how 'easy' it is to steel/buy uranium form the former USSR, and import it into the USA or other major 'western' nations via shipping containers. This alone is highly problematic since it seems to have been lifted almost word for word from a poor Tom Clancy novel. However, my main issue with this section is its clear aim to create the picture where its so easy to do that practically anyone could do it. As such your left wondering how no one yet has.
  
  This wonderment is answered in the next section where they explain that in order to build a bomb you need around $6 million and a team of 25 to 30 professional physicists, metal workers, craftsmen, machinists, etc and a disused artillery gun. So not that easy then; so why all the scaremongering up to that point?
  
  Beyond this the documentary is filled with interesting interviews from various former world leaders and retired intelligence officers. These are all very well and good but add little other than a personal perspective, leaving the wider moral issues surrounding nuclear proliferation, and the idiotic notion of a nuclear deterrent utterly untouched.
  
  Sadly the director/producer have managed to take a simple and unarguable central argument (that we'd all be better off if no one had such weapons), and surrounded it with ungraceful shock tactics which leaves the viewer feeling cheated.
  
  The film is also willing to make shocking leaps of logic (even suggesting that unless we change our ways global nuclear destruction is assured) and splice in unrelated crash footage (air show crashes and space probe malfunctions) and pass it off as being directly related to the 'certain' threat of imminent destruction.
  
  In short Countdown to Zero is an oversimplified, under researched propaganda film aimed to promote a single cause. I may well even agree with the films central cause, but I'm deeply suspicious of any organisation that is so willing to present rampant shock tactics as its main thrust of attack.
  
  Re-watch Dr. Stangelove instead.   7 out of 9 people found this review helpful
  Report offending content.
  
  
  64% from 389 members