Countdown to Zero reviews
Review by on 28 Sep 2010
Lucy Walker’s documentary polemic on nuclear disarmament – composed out of archive footage of nuclear tests, terrorist attacks and interviews with the heads of state and the technicians who had their fingers on the triggers – is a terrifying film. Walker is trying to induce pandemic paranoia in viewers, and goes some way towards succeeding. I was a level-headed, fully-functioning human before I saw this film. She has reduced me to a gibbering wreck, stockpiling IV drips and whimpering on the phone to estate agents in the Outer Hebrides. I currently live 2 miles from central London. By the director’s calculation this gives me a 0% chance of avoiding death by nuclear vaporisation. In the Outer Hebrides it will take me at least a few weeks to die from radiation poisoning. But that too is apparently unavoidable.
Despite its scare mongering, the film really drives home that – for all the bluster about Iran and North Korea – the actual current state of nuclear proliferation merely reinforces the hegemonies of the old 1st and 2nd Worlds. There are just under 24,000 nuclear weapons on the planet of which Russia has 13,000, America 9,600, a few hundred each for China, France and Britain, 70 each maintained in a stalemate between India and Pakistan, Israel a handful and North Korea only 4. Calls and sanctions from America and Russia for Iran to retreat from its uranium enrichment programme are hypocritical in the extreme. The message of this concise essay-film is the disarmament must start at home.
Chris Stefanowicz
Despite its scare mongering, the film really drives home that – for all the bluster about Iran and North Korea – the actual current state of nuclear proliferation merely reinforces the hegemonies of the old 1st and 2nd Worlds. There are just under 24,000 nuclear weapons on the planet of which Russia has 13,000, America 9,600, a few hundred each for China, France and Britain, 70 each maintained in a stalemate between India and Pakistan, Israel a handful and North Korea only 4. Calls and sanctions from America and Russia for Iran to retreat from its uranium enrichment programme are hypocritical in the extreme. The message of this concise essay-film is the disarmament must start at home.
Chris Stefanowicz
