Fail-Safe Review: This Is How The World Ends

While it shares similarities with Dr. Strangelove and 12 Angry Men, Fail-Safe is a masterful thriller filled with anxiety and despair in its own right.

Fail-Safe in particular has really suffered from this comparison; it disappointed at the box office upon release and has stood in the shadow of Dr. Strangelove ever since (in part because of how aggressively Stanley Kubrick campaigned against the film), and it’s a shame, because Fail-Safe is an astonishing cinematic feat.

After a computer system specifically designed to prevent nuclear attacks malfunctions, a plane with a warhead is sent to destroy Moscow. Any further communication with the jet that carries the bomb is impossible, and panic spreads among the American officials. The consequences, should the attack actually succeed, would be absolutely catastrophic for the relationship of the US and Russia and, with an ensuing war, for the entire world.

Despite the similarities in plot, a much more apt comparison, I think, would be with Sidney Lumet’s own magnum opus, 12 Angry Men. Fail-Safe is a film that takes place within the confines of a select few rooms. There are graphics, phone calls, and a live feed of the plane’s positions that let us gather pieces of information from the outside world, but it’s in essence still a movie about a bunch of men trapped in a room who have to make a tough decision. Where in 12 Angry Men the stakes are the life of a young man, in Fail-Safe it might just be the fate of the world.

The result is a palpable sense of dread that lies behind every decision and word. They can blame a technical error all they want, but every man in that room knows, even if some are too cowardly to admit it, that this is their mistake, and if they can’t fix the situation, the blood of countless deaths will be on their hands. Above all, the President of the United States of America (Henry Fonda, of 12 Angry Men), who is on a call with the American ambassador in Russia and has to somehow convince one of the US’ biggest enemies that the plane that’s on its way to destroy their capital is not an act of aggression and that they should trust the US military to deal with it.

It’s more than just the highly strenuous relationship between the two countries in the wake of the Cold War that makes this an impossibly hard task to pull off. The endless systems in place to prevent a nuclear strike from occurring are suddenly becoming absolute assurances that it will happen. Every attempt to circumvent them triggers another safety precaution. There are two things happening in the mind of every person in this room: on one hand they’re trying to figure out how to still stop all of this, but at the same time they’re also having to come to terms with the reality of what it will mean to fail.

Like 12 Angry Men, this is an ensemble piece through and through. Every actor that makes up this incredible cast led by Henry Fonda, no matter their screentime and even if it’s just their voice, plays a part in reinforcing the absolute despair that fills these concrete walls. And like 12 Angry Men, Director Sidney Lumet proves once again that he’s more than capable of making a simple room the most cinematic location you’ve ever seen. It never feels like a stage play due to his and cinematographer Gerald Hirschfeld’s use of lighting and framing, creating some beautiful black and white images.

All comparisons to 12 Angry Men or Dr. Strangelove aside, Fail-Safe is a masterpiece in its own right. It’s a tight real-time thriller set in only a few rooms where the end of the world is looming above every word and action. The tension that is built there, as well as the dread and despair, is all-consuming, with every performance finely tuned to cement those feelings. While the anxiety of the Cold War might be a distant memory by now, the reality of mutually assured destruction because of one wrong decision is as relevant as ever. Maybe the one unrealistic thing about Fail-Safe is how much the president cares.

Fail-Safe is now available to watch on digital and on demand, and on DVD and Blu-Ray.

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