Fail Safe (1964)
Directed by Sidney Lumet
Because of a technical defect an American bomber team mistakenly orders the destruction of Moscow. The President of the United States has but little time to prevent an atomic catastrophe from occurring.
3 connections found
View:
3 connections, in both directions
What critics compared Fail Safe to
…films like Fail Safe or Dr Strangelove have suggested, we’re not much more than human error away from the end of the world…
A House of Dynamite’s ending feels less like a bold echo of Fail Safe and more like a shrug.
…titles like Fail Safe…
Nuclear missile horror stories used to be more frequent in the years after the Cold War first heated up, most famously 1964’s accidental diptych Fail Safe and Dr. Strangelove, followed by 1983’s accidental diptych WarGames and The Day After.
A House of Dynamite doesn’t have the sweaty humanity of Fail Safe or the dark absurdism of Dr. Strangelove.
Cold war–era filmmakers asked what happens when the bomb drops, from bureaucratic panic in Fail Safe (1964) to full-on collapse in Threads (1984).
Except where the films of the 1960s, like Fail Safe (1964) and Dr. Strangelove (1964), were more concerned with a Cold War at the hands of the U.S. and Russia, the eighth entry in the Mission: Impossible franchise is worried about the power we’re giving to A.I.
This truth is in no small part thanks to the contributions of screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky ("Marty," "The Americanization of Emily," "Altered States"), director Sidney Lumet ("12 Angry Men," "The Pawnbroker," "Fail-Safe," "Murder on the Orient Express," "Dog Day Afternoon," "The Verdict"), and stars Peter Finch, Fay Dunaway, William Holden, and Robert Duvall.