Fail-Safe, Sidney Lumet, 1964

Made the same year as Dr Strangelove, it covered the same territory. Much if it takes place in the War Room. They watch the planes on the big board. Fail-Safe was an independent film. Its release was delayed so Dr Strangelove would be first.

Supersonic U.S. bombers mistakenly head off to nuke Moscow and can’t be recalled. The U.S. president Henry Fonda, speaking through interpreter Larry Hagman, talks to the Soviet premiere by phone.

In this movie, the president can essentially order people to commit suicide and they’ll do it. There are the bomber crews, the U.S. ambassador in Moscow who waits to die on the roof of the embassy rather than fleeing into the countryside, and there are fighter pilots who run out of fuel and go down in the arctic ocean trying to shoot down the planes.

  

If I were in a bomber and the president’s voice came over the radio telling me to turn around, I think the wise thing to do would be to turn around. Why kill yourself blowing up a city full of people when you have an excuse not to? If it turns out to be a Soviet guy doing an impression of the president, let them have that victory. Make the guy happy. Don't murder millions of people as your last act on Earth.

With Walter Matthau expressing the same thoughts George C. Scott did in Dr Strangelove. With Dom DeLuise and Sorrell Brooke.

Directed by Sidney Lumet.

 

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