Truth Most Brutal

Last Best Chance, the nuclear terror fright flick produced by the Nuclear Threat Initiative, premiered on HBO this week. NTI, headed by Sam Nunn, is Ted Turner's anti-WMD foundation.

With its movie production values and starring TV star Fred Dalton Thompson (you know him--he shuttles back and forth from politics to acting to politics to acting), it seems directed toward the cable TV/DVD crowd, which is more likely to respond to a thriller than their actual impending doom.

Though intriguing in showing what the nuclear materials look like and how they're handled, Last Best Chance may, however, be a little too real. I envision many viewers clicking off halfway through, sensing--acurately--that the ending holds little hope.

Nevertheless, bringing nuclear terrorism out of the shadows is a courageous and momentous step on the part of NTI. (More on this in a future piece of mine.)

Despite how cliff-hanging the film is, the best part may be Sam Nunn's eloquence on the threat in a discussion afterwards hosted by Tom Brokaw featuring Senator Richard Lugar too, also of Nunn-Lugar fame.

Incidentally, Hendrik Hertzberg in the New Yorker's Talk of the Town got a telling quote from Ted Turner at the initial screening of the film. Until a few years ago, Turner said, "I still thought that nuclear weapons, biological and chemical weapons, was an area that the government took care of."

Also available free from NTI, Last Best Chance's next showing--it's only forty-five minutes long--is on HBO is Sunday, October 23 at 10 a.m. For those who think they can handle the truth, remember, it always comes with consequences.

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