Based on a 1962 novel born of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Fail Safe will have you clenching whatever is nearby, whether your real-life nuclear moment is perilously fraught or just plain dangerous. The film takes place over a handful of tense hours during which a series of mishaps, malfunctions, and misunderstandings send an American bomber fleet bearing down on Moscow. The president (Henry Fonda) gets on the phone to diffuse the situation with the Soviet Premier, while teams at an Omaha command station and the Pentagon scramble to problem-solve. Fonda is a remarkable source of calm—polite to all, no matter the stakes in the moment. (His performance makes you shudder to think of the cast of characters who have held this job throughout actual history—and might again.) Director Sidney Lumet, whose feature debut was the Fonda-starring 12 Angry Men, injects constant unease with low-angle shots, extreme close-ups, and judicious inserts of Fonda’s lips and eyes. Meanwhile, an opening dream sequence of a bullfight—frenetically edited and perhaps partly animated—destabilizes you in a way that lasts until the movie’s final moments, a climactic montage that is also brilliantly cut. (The film’s editor is Ralph Rosenblum, whose work was central to the subliminal intensity of Lumet’s The Pawnbroker.) Also featuring Walter Matthau, a bit out of place as a smug, warmongering political scientist, and Larry Hagman, very good as an interpreter whose competence belies the fact that he’s scared out of his wits.
(9/12/2024)
