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Countdown To Zero Narrator: Gary Oldman with interviews including Jimmy Carter, Valerie Plamo Wilson, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Robert McNamara, F. W. de Klerk, Tony Blair and Ahmed Rashid Director/Scriptwriter: Lucy Walker Documentary Magnolia Films Rating: R for unsettling images Running Length: 95 minutes The Universal Clock is still ticking. This documentary, which concerns nuclear armaments around the world, would shake your day up and have you intently watch any clock in sight. Writer/director Lucy Walker has compiled footage from nuclear tests to interviews with top leaders to show us that it would be possible to build a small nuclear bomb, probably in someone’s kitchen. The last place anyone would suspect. In fact, Countdown to Zero is a how-to on smuggling nuclear material. Starting with the work of Robert Oppenheimer and his statement “…the size of a tennis ball and it would all disappear…” to a statement that Al Qaeda wants to kill 4,000,000 people to balance the deaths they believe are caused by the West, we find that many people believe bombs are a way of life. The late President John F. Kennedy’s speech that three things would cause a nuclear disaster: accident, miscalculation or madness and Pakistan’s statement that “…we will have the bomb if the people have to eat grass…” are eye-openers. We see what a struggle nations of the world are in today because of atom splitting. Safeguards are mainly in-effective or non-existent and several instances are shown how plutonium can be smuggled from country to country. Taking President Kennedy’s speech components, part by part, an accident is a U.S. plane accidentally loaded with nuclear weapons. Miscalculation has Russia thinking it was being attacked when it actually was a research plane. Madness is any dictator on the planet who has power as the first word of their vocabulary. The aftermath of a nuclear attack? One scientist says, “You can forget about civil liberties.” I thought of the television series, “Jericho,” in which over 20 nuclear bombs were detonated in the U.S. to bring down the government and replace it with a business/mercenary complex. Not pleasant. All in all, Countdown to Zero is certainly informative and at the end are web sites for people who are interested in more information. Radiation lasts for thousands or even millions of years, so for something nuclear to explode in a populated area, it would truly be The End. Copyright 2010 Marie Asner
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