Countdown to Zero

With a rigorous eye, documentary filmmaker Lucy Walker examines the arms race from the inception of the atomic bomb to the present, building Countdown to Zero around a speech by President Kennedy in which he warned of “accident, miscalculation, and madness” in regard to nuclear power. Kennedy may serve as the film's conscience, but its heart belongs to physicist Robert Oppenheimer—the man who oversaw the Manhattan Project only to later regret the destruction it would engender. But even Oppenheimer couldn't have predicted the eventual ready availability of highly enriched uranium. Aside from deadly contemporary explosions in Oklahoma City, Madrid, and other urban centers, the director looks at a number of near-misses, while drawing on comments from figures in academia, government, and journalism, from Russia's Mikhail Gorbachev to Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf (former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson provides the de facto narration). Kennedy concluded, “The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us,” to which Walker adds a note of guarded optimism, speaking with former South African president F.W. de Klerk, who dismantled his nation's nuclear infrastructure (most of her other subjects, regardless of political affiliation, also agree that it's the right thing to do). Although unnecessarily heavy-handed at the close, Countdown to Zero is a welcome addition to the anti-nuclear film canon. Recommended. (K. Fennessy)