Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

'On the Beach' has a great premise to work with - a town ignoring the impending radioactive doom creeping and strolling slowly with the winds of the ocean towards it, and a navy team with a submarine that does not want to suspend the cloak of importance of their duties. The scenes of tranquil and playfulness are especially well-made and has the bittersweet comfort of ignorance in helplessness. The exploration of the vacant landscapes of American shores and harbours is unnerving. I did enjoy the reactions of most of the people to their eventual demise. What really disturbs the story is the ill-paced romance aspects. If they had spent more time with people coping (or not coping) in these strange circumstances instead of the romance plots, this could have been a classic. It was evident that the movie was not about the nuclear catastrophe itself, but how the Australian town reacts to it. But it takes a while to pick up. The party scene at the beginning of the film, for example, is extremely boring and not essential.

I saw this movie when it 1st came out. I was like no other I had ever seen. The cinema was full. We all left in absolute SILENCE! Much better than later versions.

Still this one remains perhaps the most effective "end of the world as we know it" american films, cool-headed in frozen cold war times, with an unusually light touch by the Oliver Stone (but a tad more significant in my books) of those days. Not in the least pedantic, never dull (though a bit stretching at 134 minutes), at times almost elegiac and decidedly pessimistic, Kramer's On the Beach boasts a typically strong cast, crowned by a fantastic playing off each other of Peck and Gardner, with the latter being nothing sort of magnificent in her vulnerable first hour in the film. Premiered, among others, in Moscow 58 years ago this month. Peck, a life long supporter of nuclear disarmament, attended.

Fact: Cold War mass nuclear shots were never fired, either in anger or by accident. Cold War mutual destruction never occurred- so with hindsight this film's sense of inevitability is for me its biggest flaw. And the basic concept of this film (just passively sit back and take the bomb hits and fallout) does not reflect the thinking nor reflect the actions of leaders or of a large proportion of humanity at the time. And its a fact that no leader of the USA, Soviet Union or any other country was ever careless or reckless with such weapons during the cold war. Nobody ever went too far with this stuff- plans for nuclear powered aircraft were scrapped, the neutron bomb idea was scrapped, a tactical nuclear howitzer was built but never used, testing of actual nuclear weapons by the major powers was eventually stopped altogether.Nobody just sat around passively. Pro-actively there were endless numbers of bomb shelters being built, enormous salt mines were to be used for mass shelter. The military had nuclear bunkers in use, culminating in the ultimate shelter at Cheyenne Mountain which was constructed in the early 60's. There was talk of using other large mines and existing caverns for mass shelter. There was a nuclear evacuation center at Greenbriar for Congress (although I am not sure when it was finished). Treaties for limitation of nuclear bomb tests and arms reduction were constantly being negotiated beginning in the early 1960's, some of them were signed and honored by the parties over the ensuing decades. I emphasize again: some were signed and honored. Thousands of nuclear weapons were eventually jointly inspected by the opposing countries and dismantled.As has been noted by many reviewers, the film is slow and dull although well-acted by a stellar cast. The dullness doesn't really matter to me since the overall concept is so at odds with most public thinking and so at odds with efforts at negotiation in those days and communication through the "hotline" and other means, the movie is fatally flawed for me. This film's anticipated Cold War accidental apocalypse never happened. But the non-happening was no accident. It was due to deliberate effort, hard work and planning by countless individuals including civilian, military and diplomatic the world over. From the pacifist protester to the hardest-line government planner who wanted to "overwhelm" an opponent in a war to the voters (in countries allowed to vote) to builders of shelters the world over, all walks of life actively tried to do the best they could in their individual way to avoid such conflict, rather than sit around waiting for senseless death by technology.