I'll tell you why so serious

How sad is this?

Good concept, poorly executed.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Far from being an irrelevant glimpse of an alternate history that never materialized, the fictional re-invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in "Deterrence" provides a highly relevant alternative to the U.S. approach to rogue states in the world today. With the U.S. fighting two wars and the budget looking grim, it crosses the mind of even the most hawkish among us whether feckless air wars and costly ground wars are worthwhile. The alternative is simple, elegant, and ghastly: a promise to drop a nuclear bomb on our enemy if they do not meet U.S. demands. Imagine if Afghanistan or Pakistan had been told in September 2001 to turn over Bin Laden and Mullah Omar or face the imminent nuclear annihilation of Kabul and Islamabad. Would Bin Laden not have been swinging from the end of a noose ten years ago? It's a compelling and stark bit of realpolitik, suitable for discussions at the café among political intellectuals. But it works well as drama too as we watch Kevin Pollak's character, Walter Emerson, grow in the movie from a mousy, underwhelming "second banana" into a steely, decisive leader. Director Rod Lurie says that ultimately, Pres. Emerson is a villain for making such a heinous threat. Viewers can make up their own minds. Some of the scenes involving the local customers in the diner border on cheesy, awkward, or artificial; but the tension, surprising decisions, and political intrigues played out in this film make it a must-see national security drama.

Not great art or cinema, but an interesting and entertaining movie. Certainly gets the part right about who are the people trying to kill us and that we should take them seriously and resolve the problem before it is too late to do it without massive casualties. Sheryl Lee Ralph is much under used actor; I have never seen her do a bad job, and usually she is excellent, as she is here. Timothy Hutton is an excellent actor (pick up a copy of Q&A, excellent movie)and again, for some reason he does not get enough good parts. And who does not like Kevin Pollack? He is entertaining in everything he does. If would have been nice if they could have upped the budget a few dollars for some decent cut through footage, but hey, this movie is basically for the folks that think.

I sat through this dreck on a boring Friday night.It's another one of those exercises in frustration. Does this film try to uphold American patriotic jingoism or is it a send-up? Both at once? Neither? It ain't good when a movie this overtly political only confuses the viewer with its message.If THAT is the intent, doesn't the film fail completely? From a dramatic standpoint, the film's setting in a remote location--a diner in a small, snowbound Colorado town--is an excellent premise, as is the de rigeur ensemble cast. (The screenplay would stand better as a stage play: few props, stark lighting.) But that's about all that can be said that's positive. One of the craziest details of the story (among several others that are downright LAUGHABLE) is the "100-megaton" weapon dropped from a bomber aircraft on Baghdad. One hundred megatons? The former Soviet Union developed and tested a 57-megaton weapon in 1961. The weapon was so outsized that its carrier plane needed modification to its bomb bay doors just to get the thing off the ground. Furthermore, the largest weapon ever in use in the U.S. arsenal was 9 megatons, and it has been phased out for smaller bombs.So, yes, the bomb sure went off on this one. Don't bother.

In order for a techno-thriller to work, it must at least be plausible enough for us to be willing to suspend belief. This film has absolutely no feel or understanding of even the most basic features of its subject matter. It tries to fake credibility while throwing around ridiculous non-facts such as a 100 megaton bomb, a B2 stealth bomber being casually tracked by Iraqi radar, a TV communications satellite that somehow is equipped with not only a real time TV camera but one that films ground level shots. When the movie shows a clip of the B2, we instead see an F-117 which looks absolutely nothing like a B2. The super duper satellite (actually just one of a small constellation of satellites the TV network supposedly owns) seems to be able to warp back 50 years at will because it captures familiar black and white footage that is obviously from one of the early H-bomb test in the Pacific Ocean. This is more remarkable still as the explosion is supposed to be taking place in the middle of a desert.The President and his advisors are playing out their full intercontinental nuclear game of brinksmanship in a little over an hour, and yet still have time to chat up the morons repeatedly at length in the diner. For some inexplicable reason the morons, including one gun toting one, have not been sent packing by the Secret Service but instead are allowed to butt into and sidetrack negotiations between heads of state in which tens of millions of lives are at stake. The only moron who is even mildly rebuked is a ludicrous right wing homophobic bigoted anti-Semite cardboard character of the sort only a Hollywood provincial pinhead could believe exists out there in fly-over land.All these features seem to be in the film to give it heft and credibility so that it can go about preaching some kind of demented apocalyptic message to us. In the course of their proselytizing, the films writers have their President off handily incinerate a large city of mostly innocents in order to demonstrate what a peace loving mensch he is.Alfred Hitchcock thought that actors were some of God's dumbest creatures. He obviously never met any of the writers, producers, or director of this film.