Review of Countdown to Zero (2010) by Mike M — 22 Aug 2011

Walker, attempting something a little more archive- and interview-based after a pair of personality-driven documentaries ("Blindsight", "Waste Land"), stitches her material together with some urgency, and she's secured impressive access.

.. I just wondered whether she wasn't guilty of trumping up her case in places by her use of evocative footage: surely the clips of space shuttles exploding on launch (while spectacular and suitably doomy) have nothing very much to do with the nuclear threat.

Clearly, there's still some risk, and we'd be mad to shut our eyes to it entirely, but I also wondered whether this particular fear wasn't generational; that Walker's argument will have most resonance for those older viewers who were taught in school to duck and cover, or who happened across such key 70s/80s texts as "Threads", "The Day After" and "When the Wind Blows" - and thus have found it hard to shake off the dread atmosphere of the Cold War.

The rest of us may find that, between global warming, the rise of Simon Cowell and the fact nobody seems to have any money any more, we have reasons enough not to sleep at night: sure, the strained relations between Iran and Israel are a source of continual background concern, but having viewed "Team America: World Police", I refuse to be scared of Kim Jong-Il.