This is our generation’s Dr. Strangelove ... but it’s deadly serious.
Director Kathryn Bigelow is right at home with intense, white-knuckle geo-political thrillers, having kept us glued to seats with 2008’s The Hurt Locker and 2012’s Zero Dark Thirty. Even so, I suspect most viewers won’t be prepared for the deeply unsettling events of this disturbingly probable scenario.
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| Even as matters grow increasingly dire, and the atmosphere in the White House Situation Room becomes more tense, Capt. Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson) calmly orchestrates and oversees all the necessary procedures. |
Noah Oppenheim’s clever script is divided into three chapters, each of which concludes at a screaming point ... whereupon the clock rolls back, and we witness the same events through the eyes of different key players: folks at the other end of telephones, in situation rooms elsewhere, scrambling to replace somebody missing at a meeting. In each case, the second and third go-rounds expand upon details, amplify the tension, and minimize reasonable options.
The time is a reasonable extrapolation of our near future. Despite inroads made back in 1969, thanks to the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks and subsequent Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, nuclear proliferation once again has ramped up (as it already is, in our real world).
Part One, titled “Inclination Is Flattening,” focuses primarily on two sets of characters: the personnel at the White House Situation Room, supervised on this particular morning by Capt. Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson); and the 49th Missile Defense Battalion at Fort Greely, Alaska, under the command of Maj. Daniel Gonzalez (Anthony Ramos).
Walker is informed of potentially troublesome recent events, notably an uptick in chatter between Iran and its proxies, and uncharacteristic silence from the DRPK (North Korea), following a ballistic missile test.
Then, suddenly, an sea-based early warning X-band radar station detects an unidentified intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launch: not at point of origin — as should have been the case, thanks to orbiting Defense Support Program (DSP) satellites — but in mid-flight over the northwest Pacific Ocean. The initial assumption is that it’s simply another of the many DRPK test flights that’ll terminate in the Sea of Japan...
...but then the ICBM’s trajectory enters low orbit, with an updated strike target of Chicago.
In 19 minutes.
Hastily assembled phone and videoconferencing is established between the Situation Room, the Pentagon, various armed forces commands, and the President. Secretary of Defense Reid Baker (Jared Harris) initiates the continuity of governance protocol, which alerts armed soldiers to scoop up numerous “designated evacuees,” — willing or not — including Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) official Cathy Rogers (Moses Ingram).
Forced calm prevails, thanks to Walker’s steady hand at the tiller; we’re prepared for this sort of thing. Gonzalez and his team launch a pair of ground-based interceptors (GBIs), specifically designed to knock ICBMs out of the sky.
The countdown advances ... and advances...
...and we rewind half an hour, into Part Two: “Hitting a Bullet with a Bullet” (a phrase ballistic experts will recognize). The focus shifts to the Offut Air Force Base in Nebraska, and STRATCOM commander Gen. Anthony Brady (Tracy Letts, crisply persuasive), previously just a talking head on one of the Situation Room monitors. He coordinates with B2 bombers scrambling for possible retaliation; we meet two of the pilots, as they begin the day by exchanging pleasantries.
Baker also warns the President that China, Russia and Iran — having also recognized that Chicago is a target — have mobilized their forces, in the eventuality of retaliation.
Deputy National Security Advisor Jake Baerington (Gabriel Basso), running through D.C. traffic to reach the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC), warns the President against reacting impulsively, since the ICBM remains unattributed. He also points out that the failure of the DSP satellites could result from a cyber penetration of the U.S. Command and Control systems.
(Let’s hope, in real life, that U.S. military computer systems are better protected than everything else that’s so inexcusably vulnerable to hacking.)
Elsewhere, National Security Agency DRPK analyst Ana Park (Greta Lee) weighs in — by phone — regarding North Korea’s submarine-launched ballistic missile capabilities.
At Walker’s request, Baerington contacts the Russian foreign minister; their conversation is ... tense. And unsurprising.
At which point the clock rolls back again, and we enter Part Three, from which this film gets its title. The focus here is entirely on the President (Idris Elba), looking forward to an enjoyable media op with members of the Jump Shot Girls Basketball Camp. POTUS — we never get his name — is in his element, working the crowd, shooting hoops and cheering the girls who make their shots; the sequence feels macabre, given what we know is coming.
Things are interrupted abruptly, the President whisked away and airlifted by Marine One, to an undisclosed destination. His ever-present aide, Lt. Commander Robert Reeves (Jonah Hauer-King), pulls out the “response book.” POTUS is horrified by the impossible decision he must make. Reeves, professionally impassioned and clinical, finally melts enough to admit that he has dubbed the three options “Rare, medium and well-done” (the absolute epitome of gallows humor).
Although the core premise is overwhelming enough, the film gets more dramatic heft from the masterful cross-cutting Bigelow and editor Kirk Baxter make between these key players and ordinary folks unknowing going about their morning responsibilities: a father trying to get his sick child to see a doctor; a grown daughter little realizing that a phone call from her estranged father might be the last time she hears his voice; a pregnant wife; and even Park, attending the 162nd re-enactment of the Battle of Gettysburg with her daughter.
Equally disturbing is the fact that — although all of these specialists have trained extensively for this very situation — when it actually hits, some lose their cool. Gonzalez began the day with an argument with his girlfriend; Baker is completely distracted by personal issues. Even POTUS, Elba persuasively characterizing the man’s overwhelmed agony, is far more indecisive than he should be.
By contrast, the professional demeanor displayed by Walker, Baerington, Reeves and Brady offers hope ... to a point. Ferguson, Basso, Hauer-King and Letts, respectively, are superb.
The rising tension is heightened by composer Volker Bertelmann’s disconcerting synth score, and particularly by a droning vamp that augments each new setback.
The crucial exchange occurs between POTUS and Brady.
“This is insanity,” POTUS laments, as they chat by phone.
“No,” Brady corrects, “this is reality.”
Let’s hope not.
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