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In 1964, there appeared another movie handling the same issue, namely US bombers dropping nuclear bombs on the Soviet Union by accident, be it by some mechanical failure or by some deranged general. It goes without saying that it was Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove"(1964). But, I prefer "Fail Safe" to this famous movie, not only because "Dr. Strangelove" is a kind of black joke, but also because, as a drama, "Fail Safe" is so intense and gripping that I've never been bored with it no matter how many times I've watched it. It's certainly a movie made by the same director who made that stunning movie "12 Angry Men"(1957). Tense and tight, I can assure that you will completely forget the passage of time while you are watching it. Besides, this movie is in a sense quite educational, for by watching it, it can be quite easily glimpsed why it shall become fatal once another world war has broken out. That is; the same amount of sacrifice will be needed to stop it once it has happened. Human beings has a trait that they can't keep a thing in an unbalanced state between the two sides concerned. Debts must be paid back some time in the foreseeable future. Likewise, the loss of a huge amount of lives inflicted on one side must be compensated by the sacrifice of the same amount of lives by the other. Otherwise, the war will never stop until both sides perish. And, another fatal point is that the human loss inflicted on one side in another world war is expected to become so huge in quite a short period during which there shall be no room for either of the both parties concerned to think anything in order to obviate fatal consequences that it can also be easily expected that the compensation for it by the other will be possible only by the sacrifice of the same amount of human loss, and definitely impossible by way of, say, economic solution. Henry Fonda knows this, and orders bombing New York city. That is the only way out as the Russian premier says in this movie. In this respect, it might seem that bombing of New York city by the order of the president of the United States himself will never be possible even if the same kind of situation has ever arisen. Probably it might be true. But, in that case, the war will never end until the whole world has been completely devastated and obliterated. In short, this movie is posing us a kind of double bind situation by forcing us to a position where we have to make an impossible choice between complete implausibility and the end of the whole world, and teaching us by way of it how fatal once the next world war has happened. The more the story seems to be implausible, the more becomes it improbable that the world would survive if actually another world war ever happened. This is definitely clever way of showing the obvious fact that we the human beings can't afford to have even one more another world war.
