‘Countdown to Zero’ Paints Vivid Picture of Nuclear Threat

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Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – Lucy Walker’s “Countdown to Zero” is the most terrifying film of the year and one of the most frightening documentaries in a long time. The director pushes the envelope of taste a bit too far in the fear-mongering final act and underlines her point a few too many times in the process but the education that comes with the terror is a necessary one.

President John F. Kennedy famously said, “Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident, or miscalculation, or by madness.” Walker uses the quote as a regular reference point, putting it on the screen and highlighting sections to serve as chapter breaks for her detailed look at the nuclear threat.

Countdown to Zero
Photo credit: Magnolia Pictures

She begins with the concept of madness and how terrorists or maniacal world leaders could buy or even build a nuclear weapon to use on enemies, including the United States. Intercut with footage of hapless Americans walking the streets of major cities and maps with blast radii drawn on them, Walker vividly paints a picture of a world in which intentional nuclear annihilation is much more conceivable than you would ever like to imagine. With interviews with Russian workers who merely walked away with nuclear material and conversations about how it would be as easy to smuggle said material into the United States as it is to transport marijuana, the first half-hour of “Countdown to Zero” could reduce audience members prone to agoraphobia to tears.

Walker moves on to “accident” and details the number of countries who have nuclear power and the likelihood that someone could make a simple mistake with the deadliest substance in the history of mankind. It’s much more likely than your worst nightmares. Planes have flown over the United States with nuclear bombs ready to accidentally drop. A training tape was accidentally put in at NORAD and a shocking amount of items were checked off the response checklist before the mistake was realized.

Finally, she examines the concept of miscalculation – the concept of what could be the four scariest words in the English language (“<accidental nuclear missile launch” or the thinking that they must be used in defense of a non-existent enemy. Walker gathers fascinating interview subjects as diverse as Valerie Plame Wilson and even Tony Blair, Jimmy Carter, and Mikhail Gorbachev. The moments in which the former leaders discuss nuclear power and even their fear of it have an echo of Errol Morris’ “The Fog of War,” particularly in the sadness in Gorbachev’s voice regarding his concerns and remarkably revealing archival interviews with Oppenheimer.

Countdown to Zero
Photo credit: Magnolia Pictures

The fact is that we have come and still are much closer to nuclear disaster than any of us would like to admit. For if we actually seriously considered how remarkably close we have come to the annihilation of the entire human race, it would be understandable to start building shelters or simply go as far off the grid as possible. We must continue to live our lives with enough nuclear weapons currently armed that if they were launched through accident, madness, or miscalculation, we would all die before we even knew what had happened.

Sadly, Walker clearly feels the need to “build” in the final act and she crosses a few lines of taste. There’s a long chunk of the film in which Walker goes beyond the regularly-shown footage of New Yorkers walking on security cameras and shows the ball dropping in Times Square on New Year’s Eve, timed with nuclear missile launches. Seriously? Every viewer will have reached the appropriate level of fear LONG before Walker intercuts interview footage about the vaporizing that will be caused by a bomb with people innocently celebrating New Year’s Eve.

Which raises the question of what Walker want us to do. Live in a shelter at all times? Not go to Times Square on New Year’s Eve until all nuclear material has been destroyed. What then of biological weapons? The film seems to almost support the existence of the hermit, suggesting that the rest of us are merely waiting to die.

Walker does provide a few answers in the final moments, offering interviews about the importance of security and destruction of nuclear material. But it’s a little too slight and a little too late. Admittedly, there’s power with knowledge and hopefully the film will somehow shake people into voting for elected officials who place an importance on nuclear safety. The film offers contact information for those who want to do something after watching “Countdown to Zero” but it’s likely that people aren’t going to be able to move after the film ends. They’ll be frozen in fear.

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com