Amazon.com Essentials:
It's Dr.
Strangelove, but without the laughs. Fail Safe, made
within a year of Strangelove and at the height of cold war
atomic anxiety, posits a similar nightmare scenario. A U.S. bomber is
accidentally ordered toward Moscow, ready to drop its load. The
U.S. president (Henry Fonda) and various military and congressional
leaders must then scramble to deal with the disaster. The built-in
suspense is well maintained by director Sidney Lumet, working from a
script by former blacklisted writer Walter Bernstein. The solemn,
serious approach doesn't begin to touch the brilliance of
Strangelove's inspired take on the nuclear nightmare, but
Fail Safe is absorbing and well acted (a memorable role for
Walter Matthau, for instance). The movie enters unexpected territory
in its final minutes; conditioned for feel-good endings, viewers are
still genuinely shocked by the plot turns in the final reels. The
climax comes as a sobering slap in the face, intriguingly staged by
Lumet. Now that the cold war has passed on into history, Fail
Safe stands as--thank goodness--an interesting period
piece. --Robert Horton
