The more I think about it the dumber the last 20 minutes of the movie are.
Just finished watching. Don’t know if you noticed the distant explosion type sounds in the credits. There were around 5 of them, first one coming when the ‘Sound Design by’ name comes up, the next with the Football guy in the white’s name (Jonah Hauer-King).
Thought the film was okay. WOPR would have figured it out with some tic tac toe.
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I thought that was jets
Closed Captions state
Thought it was a great movie. I’m a fan of the ending, reminiscent of the closing lines in the ‘Commitments’ - it’s poetry this way.
It’s also a grab from Spike Lee, create some cognitive dissonance and talk about what you just saw. Focus on the very real fear of something like this happening. We really are a blink away.
I’d hope I’d be like the secretary of defense’s daughter in Chicago. Happy, oblivious, and vaporized.
this is an excellent interview with the scriptwriter if you want to geek out on how close to reality the film is. There is a buried hint of how the ending might go but i’ll leave that to you.
Great details about the mechanics, getting the details right, and the outright craziness of leaving the fate of the world in a single man’s hands.
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I didn’t see that TBH
satellite hacking something something
I really enjoyed the contrast between the intense pre-planned contingencies and protocols and the emotions of panic, fear, stress etc.
The final scenes where POTUS was talking with his strike commander were great. It really is an impossible decision to make under those circumstances.
A question for those more in the know: if POTUS were to wait and allow Chicago to be flattened before retaliating, would that really make much of a difference? I don’t really buy the premise that POTUS has to make a decision before the icbm hit Chicago. I would imagine the US would still have capabilities to track more incoming icbm’s should they be launched, and giving a bit of extra time would potentially allow them to uncover what entity launched the first strike and thus narrow the counter strike to only the responsible party. Would an extra 20-30 minutes change much from the counter attacking perspective, aside from potentially averting world war 3?
the film (and the article) makes the point that subs may be able to launch these missiles . . . making the source harder to pin down
I do recall that from the film. Haven’t read the article yet.
Is it realistic that the US would be unaware of the location of the few subs with that capability from adversarial countries?
As far as I know it’s just Russia and China. And according to the film potentially DPRK. According to the googles, China has six such vessels, Russia has approx 30.
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Good interview. Thanks for posting it.
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From the perspective of conducting a nuclear war Chicago is irrelevant. It serves no real function in our ability to counter strike. So in a real scenario, a rational President would hold off on any counter strike until other missiles are launched. If Chicago was actually hit, they could pretty quickly do a forensics to determine who was behind the attack.
Bigger picture, the US nuclear systems are designed to provide second strike capability. This means even if Russia and China launch a full first strike salvo at the US and we didn’t do anything to stop it, we could still launch enough weapons after the strike to destroy both of those countries.
Suck it, windy!
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After watching the wife and I had the same thought. Given our extensive geopolitical experience, we landed where you landed … Chicago is cinders regardless. By waiting, we avoid WWIII (maybe) and when we strike back, we hit the right target. From my understanding, we have sufficient naval based capability to destroy the world even if the continental US is obliterated.
I was surprised the President was put on Marine 1 instead of Air Force 1. Maybe I missed the explanation. Was he going to the under ground bunker and AF1 couldn’t land there?
I’m still annoyed at the ending. I understand why from the writer and director’s POV they made the creative decision to end it. But, my overly linear brain needs a resolution. Given the reaction to the film, I’m not alone in that.
After the fact, AHFoD left me with a similar feeling as Civil War. A story partially told on purpose. Good, I guess, for sparking conversation but less gooder at providing entertainment.
I think the movie intentionally leaves still the opportunity of this being a not-real, electronically simulated attack. Which can obviously lead to catastrophic consequences still.
I know lots of people that feel the same about having a resolution.
I like stories like this that allow the freedom to fill in the blank pieces. Makes you think about being the person in charge and what your decision would be. Press the button or hold off.
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That’s an interesting take.
Do you think a simulation is possible?
Maybe it was the guy ‘fixing’ the TV 
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Weren’t they at one point looking at a real time thermal image of the missile? I thought they tried to rule out a fake attack or confusion with a satellite launch etc pretty early on.
I don’t know how it would be done, but let’s speculate that somehow some villain has a technology that can simulate a ICBM-like missile to radar. You’d get this scenario. It would keep going right through any anti-missile tech launched at it, and the US might be forced to respond by launching a nuke at somebody, even though the target is unclear. WW3 would be started by a non-country player that managed to get nuclear nations lobbing at each other.
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I don’t remember that part. I don’t recall them showing definitive evidence it wasn’t a fake attack. It would have to be a really good fake attack though, as I think the other countries were detecting it too.
The other ‘fake’ attack situation is a non-nuclear missile, launched to set off the US as the aggressor. Again, I think the filmmakers intentionally left it this open-ended to discuss, they left plenty of loose enough ends so lots of people can have an opinion.