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Written by Sarah Boslaugh Wednesday, 28 July 2010 15:49

Countdown to Zero offers the audience a chance to feel all enlightened and superior without actually doing anything at all, in which case viewing the film may be a substitute for action and thus ultimately counterproductive.

Lucy Walker wants you to know that the very existence of the world as we know it is in peril-not from global warming this time but from nuclear weapons. Chances are if you're interested enough to read this review, let alone shell out the cash to see her documentary Countdown to Zero in the theatre instead of waiting for it to turn up on History Channel, you already know this.

I have no problem with the message of this film, but the slick packaging (including a catchy rock score and clips from popular films such as Dr. Strangelove) and obvious attempt to capitalize on the critical and financial success of An Inconvenient Truth is disheartening. Countdown to Zero offers the audience a chance to feel all enlightened and superior without actually doing anything at all, in which case viewing the film may be a substitute for action and thus ultimately counterproductive.

Countdown to Zero has all the elements you would expect from a high-class issues documentary but with just one side of the problem. The film is a clear call to action: voiceover narration by a recognizable star (in this case Gary Oldman), well-chosen archival footage, clever animations and demonstrations (or not so clever-watch for the tennis ball) and lots and lots of talking heads.

Chief among those talking heads Valerie Plame, the CIA agent whose career came to an end when Bob Novak revealed her identity in 2003. The nuclear connection: Plame's job was to try to keep nukes out of the hands of terrorists, an enterprise she indicates in this film is ultimately doomed to failure (too many weapons in existence, too many countries with people who know how to make them, too poor security regarding the weapons and the raw materials required).

Plame is an articulate spokesperson and the manner in which her career ended also serves as a reminder of just how small-minded and reckless our own politicians can be: she was collateral damage in an attempt to discredit her husband Joseph Wilson who published an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times criticizing the Bush administration's case for invading Iraq. If the thought of George Bush having had his finger on the nuclear button, so to speak, for eight years is not terrifying enough, consider that in 1995 Boris Yeltsin came very close to authorizing a nuclear launch in response to what appeared to be a U.S. attack. As one of the speakers notes, it's a good thing Yeltsin was sober at time.

Plame is joined by an all-star lineup of talking heads, including Robert McNamara, Mikhail Gorbachev, Jimmy Carter, and Tony Blair and the film also makes use of a well-chosen collection of archival footage. As the Big One has not yet been launched, there's a certain retro feel to the whole experience as the heads can only talk about what might have happened rather than what did happen. But Walker's point is that only safe nuclear weapons are no nuclear weapons, and it's hard to argue with her on that score.
The catch is that while such a proposition is easy to agree with, the realities of global politics (as portrayed in this very film) mean that much more is required than texting your disapproval of nuclear weapons, as you are invited to do in the film's closing credits. | Sarah Boslaugh