This is one controversial movie and for a great many reasons, primarily which is the fact that it sends you off on a path which is flat out terrifying and then it takes you to a saner world — and you’re wondering, “Which is real here?” Now the world “real” in this context means which narrative am I, as the viewer, supposed to be willing to suspend my disbelief of and go along with for the sake of the creative experience? And believe me, you will not know what you’ve just watched when the credits start to roll. I even fast forwarded in the credits to see if we were really done because I would not have ended the movie on such an abrupt and ambiguous note (and that’s the last plot spoiler I will let slip here.)
First of all, Netflix has had this Kathryn Bigelow-directed movie out only a few days so expect the reviews to start pouring in and stay that way. It starts out horrifically as being in a Trump era. Which one? Trump 1.0? Now? And a great deal of the confusion is that you can’t easily identify the supporting players. The White House press secretary seems to be a solid Karoline Leavitt type so that puts us in Trump 2.0.
But the SECDEF is not the SECDRUNK that we actually have in Trump 2.0. And it logically can’t be James Mattis or Mark Esper or even Trump’s last, acting SECDEF, Christopher Miller. The SEDEF is played by British actor Jared Harris and if he represents some Obama SECDEF, the connection is not immediately made. Let’s just say, without spoiling the plot, that the Reid Baker SECDEF character played by Harris is some generic political cabinet type without actually evoking a real life comparison to some figure we might instantly recognize. In fact, most of the figures in the film are generic types as opposed to an actor discernably playing some historical character, albeit it with literary license; a fictionalized version of somebody who actually lived.
The Baker character throws a real loop, if not a monkey wrench, into the plot because he’s not recognizable. Plus, as the movie progresses, and the SECDEF character is doing things that Pete Hegseth would never do (like asking somebody to get a legal opinion) you realize how utterly and completely screwed America would be if the comedy team of Donald and Pete actually had to be making decisions along the life and death, planetary existential lines of this movie.
And right when you’re accepting that that’s where we are and you’re a nervous wreck — BAM! Suddenly, we’re in Obama-world and then your blood pressure isn’t racing quite so much. Suddenly you see how the same lines, spoken by Idris Elba playing an unnamed Black POTUS, have a different import than when spoken by Donald Trump. (Whom you never see, or anyone who looks like him. A Trump imitator curses from behind a black screen, presumably because he can’t get the video equipment working.)
Yes, this is a message film. It is our worst nightmare come true in the hands of Trump. Then it is a crisis of immense humanitarian concern in the capable hands of an Obama figure. And if we ever have a SECDEF like the one Jared Harris portrays, we are in deep kimchi as a nation. Maybe that’s the comparison with Pete Hegseth. Maybe the writer didn’t want to come out and cast a Fox News pretty boy talking head, so he wrote the part as a believable physical type, a middle aged politico, but one with great emotional instability.
(Since Hegseth spends all his time worrying about leaks at the Pentagon like Trump spends all his time worrying about his ballroom, I tend to think that would be Hegseth’s first reaction in a nuclear crisis: who amongst his staff to blame?) The SECDEF character cannot cope with the crisis at hand and perhaps that’s the simple link to Hegseth. If he was a pretty boy who couldn’t cope, then you would know that Hegseth is being inferred, beyond any reasonable doubt. As it stands, Hegseth’s inadequate psychological makeup is alluded to, to put it mildly, and that serves to complicate a situation of this gravity. At least in the Trump world segment of the movie it does. In the Obama world segment, SECDEF is not that crucial an advisor.
It would be interesting to hear what Obama himself thinks of this film. Likewise getting Trump’s input would be interesting. I think Obama would completely identify with the POTUS character, faced with a moment for which nobody is truly prepared but for which the United States president is not particularly well trained, even. That philosophical and actual point was driven home.
And as for Trump? Hands down, he won’t understand this movie. I doubt if he would understand either version of Fail Safe, or Dr. Strangelove or The Day After. Trump is not a thinking man, to put it as graciously as possible. He’s also not good with numbers and you want to know who made that comment about him? None other than his pal Jeffrey Epstein.
And I would not expect Trump to understand at all the sublime irony of essential negotiations going on between heads of state abroad and lower-ranking appointees here in the states — because nobody can make the phone system work properly and merge a conference call between the appropriate parties, so their surrogates have to rise to the challenge and save the world.
And I absolutely would not expect Trump to understand that the president has the sole authority to wage or stand down from a nuclear war, without the authority of Congress. He merely needs the nuclear codes and know which attack plan he wants to choose. And those plans have been simplified, thank you Jimmy Carter. Slate reports when Carter “was shown the attack plans that he would read if nuclear war started, he told his briefers, “I’m pretty smart, and I don’t understand a word of this.” The manual was simplified to be like menus at Denny’s restaurants; in fact, military officers called the sheets “Denny’s menus.’”
Denny’s menus? And do you want a side of spaghetti with your 50-megaton blast or maybe blueberry pie, for the perfect overkill ratio?
This movie is getting mixed reviews and that does not surprise me one jot. Roger Elbert’s site gives it four stars yet viewer reviews are running at one star. If I had to give it stars I would probably give it two or two point five stars. It has enough substance and versimilitude to where it’s a professional piece. It’s a solid effort. But the bizarre structuring and the plot lines that simply hang (Is what’s left of humanity living under a mountain in a bunker community in Adams County, Pennsylvania? And who chose who got to go there or who didn’t? And why?) make it impossible to put this movie in the same league with the classics of its narrow genre.
That saddens me because I do love Fail Safe, Dr. Strangelove and The Day After. I’ve seen them all several times. I doubt I will rescreen this again — although let me clear, the parts of this which are a solid effort are first rate. The Bizarro World structuring is some creative device that misfired, like the missile defense system itself that got the movie rolling in the first place.
ooh, jared harris. just saying foundation. and his dad.
I stopped watching Foundation because I thought it was a bad adaptation. That said, it is an incredibly difficult property to adapt, much like Dune was. I anticipate we will see some new version of the Foundation Trilogy in the future.
I like Jared Harris’s work just fine. I like all the actors in this movie. I just think the structure was batshit crazy. When you’re in the last third of a movie and saying, “WTF? Where are we? What just happened?” something has gone wrong.
There are a LOT of bad reviews. I stick by my 2.5 stars.