Countdown to Zero (***)

When polled, Americans consistently rate nuclear terrorism as a top foreign-policy concern, yet in a 2005 AP/Ipsos poll more than half said they rarely or never worried about a nuclear attack. But, argues this documentary by Lucy Walker (The Devil’s Playground, Blindsight), maybe they should. Citing a variety of experts, including former CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson and journalist Ahmed Rashid, Walker explores the risks, the ease of making a bomb, and the ease of transporting nuclear material. There’s a lot of enriched uranium that’s gone missing from the former USSR, and hiding it in kitty litter would be more than enough to evade any plausible detection systems. Probably least thought of is the possibility of an accidental detonation, or one based on false information. These scenarios have come close to happening. In one case, only the presumably sober assessment by Russian leader Boris Yeltsin that he was getting bad information prevented him from responding in kind to what seemed to be a credible indication of a United States first strike.

Visually, the film is split between talking-head shots and historical footage of nuclear tests and such, some of which could be more clearly labeled. Periodically, Walker inserts man-on-the-street type interviews in which random humans speculate on which countries have nukes (the US, Russia, the UK, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea), the number of nuclear missiles in the world (about 23,000), and how many nuclear weapons should exist. (Zeroes all around, says the self-selected sample, a lame cinematic device.)

The concluding ten minutes of the film make the case for disarmament, a goal sought by Ronald Reagan, among others. His Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev, and his 1980 election opponent, Jimmy Carter, agree in recent interviews. To make this happen, various verification procedures could be employed and so forth, we’re told. Unfortunately, this segment is much too brief to explain why, if nuclear material is so easy to hide and transport, that compliance can be ensured even among nation-states. People are already convinced of the dangers from nukes, but skeptical that disarmament can happen. Still, in explaining why nuclear proliferation remains an important issue, the film is effective.

IMDB link

viewed 7/26/10 at Ritz 5 (PFS screening) and reviewed 7/28 and 8/2/10