I almost missed this neat little thriller, since NBC decided to bury it on a Saturday night in July. Playing like an updated, more serious and sinister remake of the 1986 movie THE MANHATTAN PROJECT, it tells the story of four college students who decide to make a nuclear bomb to show how easily it can be done and thereby (they think) encourage nuclear disarmament. But after they finish it, it's stolen by a group who intend to set it off for real. Kerr Smith (DAWSON'S CREEK) plays the activist leader of the students; Katherine Heigl (ROSWELL) is the physics grad student he persuades to join the group and actually design the bomb.
The first half of the movie deals with building the bomb, the second half with trying to track it down and prevent it from detonating. Throughout, we also follow the efforts of government agents to trace stolen plutonium, the students, and the terrorist group. Good TV movie, with well-developed characters and issues. My only quibble (possible spoiler, though it's revealed early on) would be that the terrorists, instead of being foreign infiltrators, turn out to be American militia types basically working for one man's revenge.
The first half of the movie deals with building the bomb, the second half with trying to track it down and prevent it from detonating. Throughout, we also follow the efforts of government agents to trace stolen plutonium, the students, and the terrorist group. Good TV movie, with well-developed characters and issues. My only quibble (possible spoiler, though it's revealed early on) would be that the terrorists, instead of being foreign infiltrators, turn out to be American militia types basically working for one man's revenge.