Want to dream up a really wacky movie? One that couldn’t possibly work right?
Imagine a version of “Dr. Strangelove” done straight, set in a snowbound diner, in which the characters who want to pull the nuclear trigger might be the heroes. Imagine a political thriller, set in 2008, in which the president of the United States, responding to attacks on South Korea and Kuwait, keeps juggling the fate of the world with his advisers while arguing with the patrons, the local redneck bigot and the counterman.
Can’t quite picture it? You have yet to see writer-director Rod Lurie’s mind-boggling “Deterrence,” a half-smart, mostly ludicrous doomsday drama that gives new meaning to the phrase “war games.”
To say this movie’s premise is bonkers is putting it mildly. But here we go: In 2008, while President Walter Emerson (Kevin Pollak) is out west campaigning for re-election (he’s the favorite), a storm drives his entourage — including nervous chief of staff Marshall Thompson (Tim Hutton) and slick security adviser Gayle Redford (Sheryl Lee Ralph) — to seek refuge at Morty’s Roadside Diner. (Morty’s looks like the kind of creepily neutral eatery where weird bad things often happened in old “Twilight Zone” episodes.)
Weird bad things happen there, too. Shortly after the prexy’s party arrives, two crises break out, with the North Koreans threatening on one front, and Iraq once again overrunning Kuwait on another.
What to do? You would never guess. (This movie may be bad, but it’s not predictable.) President Emerson — a taciturn, poker-faced type who succeeded to high office after the death of the old president — announces from the diner that unless Iraq leaves Kuwait he will launch a nuclear attack on Baghdad and annihilate its 12 million inhabitants.
That seems extreme, but what follows is worse. The Iraqis say they will pull back on everything, including some threatening moves toward Israel, if Emerson will leave them Kuwait. Emerson swears rudely. Thompson frets; Redford muses. We slowly learn that Emerson — who, as the first Jewish U.S. president, seems unusually unconcerned with bad press for bombing an Arab state — may have something up his sleeve. But for now, he simply glowers and holds firm.
Every once in a while, fights break out with other restaurant patrons. Guns are pulled. Polls are cited. Black suitcases are flaunted. The fate of the world lies in the balance. And the question remains: Who will decide things here? The president? His advisers? Or maybe the restaurant patrons?
I will not give away any of this movie’s last-minute surprises, except to say that they are ridiculous. Provocative as they may be — and I’m sure this movie’s climax will spur heated words aplenty — they don’t flow logically from anything, whether from thriller conventions or the Geneva Conventions or from any conceivable power diplomacy that might be practiced anywhere on the planet. (Or in a Hollywood screenplay.)
The mystery here is Lurie’s attitude toward the material. Lurie is a West Point alumnus and ex-L.A. movie reporter, talk-show host and critic of unusual breeziness and chutzpah; he has gotten himself thanked three times of the last five Oscar broadcasts by winning bets with guests (Mel Gibson, Martin Landau and James Cameron) on his radio show. Star Pollak is one of Lurie’s regular poker partners.
So, is his President Emerson a hero? Or a villain? Or merely an interesting poker partner? In the press book, Lurie suggests that his movie is a Rorschach test, with the audience response determined by an individual viewer’s degree of conservatism or liberalism — with right-wingers likely to cheer Emerson on and left-wingers more prone to deplore his hard-case stand. (Lurie also suggests he’s more in the middle.)
But it seems easier in the movie’s context to see Emerson as a tough, upright guy sticking to his guns than as a bully politico operating regardless of human life. The situation smacks of the moony contrivances and slam-bang short cuts you see in Tom Clancy’s political thrillers, where all the moral issues are solved in advance and events race along like a computer game
Though “Deterrence” has good actors and fitfully smart dialogue, it’s tough to see this movie as anything more thana lower-echelon thriller with confusing politics and a wildly overwrought premise, done on the cheap. If Lurie ever shows up on the Oscars to thank himself, it won’t be for this one.
“DETERRENCE”
(star)
Directed and written by Rod Lurie; photographed by Frank Perl; edited by Alan Roberts; production designed by W. Brook Wheeler; music by Lawrence Nash Groupe; produced by Marc Frydman, James Spies. A Paramount Classics release; opens Friday. Running time: 1:41. MPAA rating: R (language and violence).
THE CAST
President Walter Emerson ……. Kevin Pollak
Marshall Thompson ………….. Timothy Hutton
Gayle Redford ……………… Sheryl Lee Ralph
Ralph …………………….. Sean Astin
Harvey ……………………. Bajda Djola
Gerald Irving ……………… Mark Thompson
