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October 17, 2005

Last Best Chance

In May, I saw Richard Lugar, Fred Thompson, Sam Nunn, and the 9/11 Commission guys on Meet the Press discussing their new film about nuclear proliferation. I went to their website, Last Best Chance, and ordered the film.

Finally, it came in the mail a few days ago and I had a chance to watch it this evening. Reviews have been rather lukewarm through the grapevine, but those reviewers may have been assigning unreasonable expectations to the film. So here's my take:

This film is designed to impress upon the viewer a sense of urgency in stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons. It is a well-made and thoroughly professional piece of work. Sens. Lugar and Nunn, being the designers of the program to secure Soviet nuclear material have chosen to focus the film on that particular proliferation possibility, though it includes others as well. The film is intended for the general viewer -- someone who doesn't really think about non-proliferation very often, or who is aware that it's an issue, but is not very informed about it. It's not really intended for those of us who -- er, who know where to go to estimate blast radius possibilities. So, much of the dialogue among the President (Fred Thompson) and his advisers consists of rehashing statistics about how hard it is to secure nuclear material, how much it costs, all the bureaucratic hurdles involved, how the Russians think we're spying on them, etc. If you are looking for Tom Clancy-esque intricacy, of either technical detail or plot, you won't find it.

But that's ok. It would really ruin the message of the work if the bad guys were rolled up by one bad-ass Rambo character in the last 5 minutes. Too many action, thriller, or national security-based films have plot devices that prey upon the ignorance of their audiences and tie up the story with a nice little bow. The whole point of this work is that once someone has spilled the nuclear beans, it's going to be pretty darn hard to pick them back up. And so, the viewer is frustrated: you mean, if Al Qaeda gets nukes, it's going to be that bad? we'll really have no options? they can just boat right up the Chesapeake with a 10KT yield?

Yes. And that's the whole point.

UPDATE: One of Nunn and Lugar's prominent links on their website is to Winds of Change.NET. That's pretty cool.

Also this, which looks intriguing: Matthew Maly's works about Russian transition to democracy and market economy

UPDATE2: Well, what do you know: Sauntering over to Winds of Change just now, I stumbled upon this excellent summary of top-notch blogosphere commentary on WMD and terrorism. Excellent.

Posted by Chester at October 17, 2005 10:54 PM

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Comments

Posted by: The Redhunter at October 22, 2005 8:11 PM