During a routine manoeuvre, a mechanical power surge at USAAF
leads to a mistaken but correctly authenticated order being sent to a wing of bombers
to drop their nukes on Moscow. Due to Russian jamming, USAAF has no idea this
has happened until after the five minute recall window. After the five-minute
window has passed, the pilots follow their training and ignore all subsequent orders
no matter who gives them – even if it’s directly from the President (Henry
Fonda) himself. Desperately the President works with the Soviet Union to stop
the bombers (and prevent the inevitable full scale nuclear war they would
provoke). Problem is national pride, mutual suspicion, subordinates who can’t
stomach co-operation between enemies and those that an accidental first strike
is the perfect way to start a nuclear war one side could win, keep getting in
the way.
While Dr Strangelove saw the insanity of MAD – the
willingness of the leaders of both sides to promote a type of war that could
only lead to the destruction of all life on earth – as so darkly absurd it
could only be a subject for jet-dark-satire, Fail Safe takes a more
humane if equally chilling route. Shot mostly with a low-key documentary
realism by Sidney Lumet, the action is restricted to no more than four main locations.
Once the crisis starts we never go outside. We never even see the Russians,
represented only by photos and their words given life by Presidential
translator Larry Hagman. Bar from the odd piece of stock footage, we are in the
bunkers with the characters. And we feel as powerless as they do, as events
spin out of control.
The film could be seen as an attack on the replacement of
humans from the system by machines. Sure, the strike is triggered by a faulty piece
of equipment. But everything after that is the result of good old-fashioned
human error. The US debate about shooting down the bombers that goes on for so
long, the bombers get out of range. The Russian refusal to accept US help to
shoot the bombers down, leading them to taking pot shots at radar ghosts. The
attempted coups on both sides in the command room, as junior officers refuse to
co-operate with the enemy. The mistrust between both sides that leads the Russians
chasing a decoy attack run rather the real bombing plane, despite the pleading
of the American General that it’s a decoy.
And above all, the crushing arrogant insanity of introducing a system like this in the first place. A system so regimented and drilled into its soldiers – removing any chance of independent logical thought – that the pilot of the bombers will even ignore his own wife pleading down the line that the first strike he believes he is retaliating against hasn’t even happened. A system where leading American advisors suggest that, because it’s so difficult to call back an attack like this, why not just launch everything else after it as well and claim victory. This system can destroy the world but has no leeway for human error and forbids any independent thought from anyone. Now that’s MAD.
It takes a while for the film to get going, laying its
groundwork slowly. Much of the first half hour introduces the characters – such
as the family life of anti-Nuclear but loyal soldier General Black (a very good
Dan O’Herlihy) and the chilling pragmatism of war theorist Professor
Groeteschele (Walter Matthau) to whom nuclear war is just a matter of working
out what the acceptable casualty rates are (he would agree with Stalin that one
death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic). We tour the USAAF base where
level-headed General Brogan (an excellent Frank Overton) and his twitchy number
two Colonel Cascio (a slightly too fidgety Fritz Weaver) demonstrate just how fool-proof
their systems are to a couple of congressmen – just as those systems fail.
From there the film plays out almost in real time, as the
planes fly the two-hour journey to drop their bombs. Two hours when everyone
tries to desperately tell themselves that this disaster can be prevented (or in
some cases, can be turned into victory). Lumet’s film captures wonderfully the
claustrophobic intensity of this. The Russians – despite never being seen – are
skilfully humanised with snatches of conversation and photographs. The pilots
are brave, resourceful, brilliantly trained – making their rigid determination
to destroy the world for no reason (because their training doesn’t allow them
to consider any other alternative) all the more tragic.
It all culminates in an impossibly bleak ending, the
President’s only alternative to all-out nuclear war is one of terrifying
magnitude. The inevitable build to this sacrifice is also executed with a
low-key intensity. Fonda is perfect in the lead role – his tortured gravitas
and decency pushing him towards ever more distasteful and finally appallingly
bleak decisions.
Lumet’s film isn’t
perfect – an overly impressionistic opening of General Black’s recurring dream
of a matador smacks of someone who has watched way too many Bunuel films – and
its slow start probably takes five minutes too long. But with its chillingly
cold glaze on the flaws in the nuclear deterrent and the people who operate it,
it deserves to be remembered as something more than Dr Strangelove Without
the Jokes.