The War Game / Culloden
by Peter Watkins
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: George McBean, Michael Aspel, Olivier Espitalier-Noel, Peter Watkins, Robert OatesDirector: Peter Watkins
Brand: NEW Yorker Films Video
Writer: Peter Watkins
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Black & White, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 120 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-07-25
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Project X
Movie Reviews of The War Game / Culloden
Movie Review: Truly Riveting
Summary: 5 Stars
The War Game is one of the best films about Nuclear War.I first saw a snippet of this on the documentary Cold War and own the VHS copy. In general, these types of stories typically have 3 basic parts: pre-attack, the attack and post attack. Of the movies made in this genre, The War Game is the strongest in dramatizing all 3 parts. What helps the War Game along is that we do not get attached to any one character (my version is only 50 minutes long) like you do in the rest of the movies in this genre. When you attempt to follow the fate of one character or a group of people, you can lose the larger societal implications of nuclear war effects.
Some contrasts: First, there are 2 other major movies that are part of this genre called Threads and The Day After. Threads was a British movie. The Day After was its American counterpart. Both are decent stories but I would give Threads some advantage here.
1) Threads does the best job with showing pre-attack and attack conditions starting from the basic bliss of most people to the terrifying attack.
2) The movie the Day After shows a good deal of the pre-attack and post attack conditions but it gets carried away with the attack situation. Its characters are very shallow and detract from an otherwise well-told story.
One of The War Game's flaws is its obvious scoffs at religion. Many of the quotes seem to suggest that American ministers are backward and stupid for making suggestions like not giving shelter space to the passing stranger. What a modern viewer may not understand is how close the US and the USSR came to nuclear annihilation during this time frame and how practical this advice really was.
The War Game's other obvious flaw is its creating moral relativism with the Soviets. The movie portrays the fact that the US and its NATO allies may have been the first to use nuclear weapons in a battle over the Fulda Gap in Germany (a likely hotspot). What the story does not explain is how the Soviets had such a large and menacing conventional presence in Eastern Europe (and the Western Europe's inability or lack of desire to take on its own defense) caused this to become part of our policy. The War Game also fails to explain how the Soviet sub fleet went from being a coastal defence force to an offensive force in rapid order with reactors and weapon systems extremely prone to accident (as evidenced by the greater number of subs lost in the Soviet fleet than in the American fleet). These factors did a great deal to de-stabilize Western Europe for some time.
Summary of The War Game / Culloden
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