Countdown to Looking Glass (1984)

Admirable film.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

When this movie came out I was well past the age of consent and had already completed two deterrent patrols on nuclear ballistic submarines. Ronald Reagan was president and the activity level of the unilateral nuclear disarmament/nuclear freeze noisemaking demographic was probably at its all-time peak. Their basic premise was that the best thing to do when faced with a threat as ominous as nuclear war was to panic. If the so-called "Pilgrims" had been made up of people of this type they would have never left England. That these people had far more energy, anxiety, lung-power, and just plain hot gas rather than plain old boring analytical ability, understanding, and judgment is perhaps best evidenced by the fact that within only five years after this movie came out the Berlin Wall fell, and only two years after that the whole shootin' match that made up the country now formerly known as the Soviet Union did, too, and all without so much as a spring-powered BB being fired across the Iron Curtain.This movie is hardly unique. There have been a number of movies that have tried to deal with this issue and like the others this one falls flat in constructing a believable scenario that would lead to a nuclear confrontation. The history of the post-war period reminds me of the metaphor of a junior high school dance when I was growing up. That history makes it clear the Soviet Union was at least as afraid of us as we were of them - in fact, probably more so. They backed down in Greece and in Berlin and in Korea. They backed down in Cuba. They didn't even do more than complain loudly when we mined Haiphong Harbor even though that put the ships they were resupplying North Vietnam with in imminent actual danger of attack and destruction. They never intervened in any middle-eastern conflict except to supply Syria and Egypt in between wars that were confined only to the more comparatively minor countries (i.e., the ones that weren't Oil Powers) found in the region. And even then, they only did that to try to swing such states to siding with them in the United Nations, and to giving them some military basing ability in those countries which if they were lucky might accrue to them something more than a passing advantage in a genuine confrontation with the West. If they ever even sent advisers during the period when those countries were in an active state of hot, shooting war with Israel I don't remember it. In the end, they did not prevent the Israelis from soundly whipping their client states in the region in every Arab-Israeli war from 1947 to 1973.Thus, they would not go to war over Saudi Arabia unless they had suddenly grown a pair like had never existed in all of Soviet history. For if you look at that history, whenever the Soviets actually had a choice they never got into it with anybody except those they saw as weak. It is one thing to attack the Finns or the Lithuanians or even the Ukranians but the United States of America is not just another Latvia or Estonia. Moreover, given the history of Saudi Arabia with both the UK and the US they comprehended perfectly well that that country was within the Western sphere of influence just as much as they take it for granted that we should understand that the Crimea is historically within their sphere. The filmmakers' premise is as weak as anybody the Russians have ever attacked in modern history except maybe Afghanistan.When you add to that the generally contrived, artificial-looking quality of the dramatized news coverage and the clichéd romantic angle to the plot this thing develops a certain high-school-play kind of quality, but since none of your kids are in it, it fails to satisfy as entertainment. The truth is, you are about infinitely better served to spend your time watching something genuinely well-made like DR. STRANGELOVE or the original version of ON THE BEACH which are about literally one or more orders of magnitude better than this. That said, I think I can agree to some extent with with one reviewer who said this was worth seeing just to see Newt Gingrich in it. Truly, the one interesting thing about this movie is the real-life people who agreed to appear in it, the big question which comes to mind being, WHY they did it. Here, Newt was at the beginning of his congressional career and surely he was looking for egocentric (if not narcissistic) self-aggrandizing attention in the way which has marked him throughout his political career. By contrast, fully 16 years after he gained but limited and short-lived attention in his 1968 attempt at a presidential bid Edmund Muskie appeared here in what looks like the last gasp for public attention of as hopeless a has-been as we have ever seen in American politics. And while apparently hardbitten and cynical realist Eric Sevareid appeared for some reason, it is not the only time he played himself in a fantasy and I have to guess that he really wasn't as much the realist he always seemed to be, or else maybe he was such a realist that he just liked the chance to pick up what was probably a handy little extra paycheck regardless of how silly a thing he had to do to get it. Most surprising to me was the appearance of Paul Warnke, who certainly had the reputation of a genuine foreign policy and national security professional of the first order. You'd think that guy would find this beneath him, but, well, who knows - maybe he liked the extra moolah too.

This old film shares the same traits as most other films about a nuclear war, this time as seen from the fourth wall, your TV screen and from the rooms of a news station.As many other nuclear war movies, in order to really submerge the viewer into something unthinkable, this film does its homework very well, and having 'real' people like Newt Gingrich playing themselves only lends extra weight.However, being filmed as mainly a series of news broadcasts, the film fails at showing the human side of the conflict, and that is a pity, because the buildup is excellent.Of all the nuclear war films done in the 80's this is not the best - Threads show a nuclear war MUCH better. But that is not to say this or any other nuclear war film should not be seen - most do a splendid job showing a nuclear war from its respective perspective and Countdown to Looking Glass fits right in.Since this is written in 2009, it feels like it is still very valid with our bank crisis, failing economy and tension i the middle-east, and the fact that Countdown is still doing fine is a testament to the value and message: It could still happen.

When it was broadcasted I was surfing through channels and came upon it. I thought it was real! It had me hypnotised into actually believing it. Just like when "War of the Worlds" was initially shown. I would like to buy a copy of this movie but have not found it online. Is it available for purchase?

Outstanding Cold War TV movie. I loved this film, it's very shocking. Possibly my favorite Scott Glenn movie next to Gargoyles his debut film. The ending is excellent and, being in the Navy, very scary. Great end of the world as we know it flick. Remember it was made when Breshnav was Leader of USSR!