Such a frustrating disappointment

Let's be realistic.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Excellent documentary narrated by actor William Shatner about the dawn of the Nuclear Age with the detonation of the first Atomic Bomb in the New Mexican Desert in he early morning hours of July 16, 1945. With the Atomic bomb in US hands it wasn't long before it was dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing as much as 130,000 people and thus ending the Second World War.It was after the war that the US started to test the atomic bomb in a number of islands and atolls in the vast Pacific Ocean which proved just how dangerous and destructive it was by vaporing both islands and ships, surplus destroyers battleships and even aircraft carriers, that the bomb was targeted at. It wasn't until late August 1949 that the US lost it's monopoly on the Atomic Bomb with the Soviet Unions detonation of its own in Eastern Siberia. With a major enemy the USSR now having the bomb which secrets was stolen from the US, by the likes of pro communists Klaus Fuchs and US Army Sergent David Greenglass and the Rosnebergs Julius & Ethel, from right under its nose the US was now determined to start testing bigger and far more destructive atomic or nuclear bombs. That in order to keep the Russians for gaining the upper hand over it in the race with the USA on the dead end road for achieving mutual destruction" or a Thermo Nuclear war which no side could possibly win.The film documents the tests conducted by the US and USSR of nuclear weapons that by 1963 at the signing by the two nations of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty well over 330 atmospheric nuclear bombs were tested by the US Governemnt alone! If you add up all the other US nuclear tests,underwater and underground,they amount to some 1,000! That's not counting those conducted by the USSR and other nations with nuclear capacity, Britian and France, the number of nuclear tests reach almost 2,000 in just under 20 years after the first atomic bomb was exploded! It's a wonder that the world was still around by then since there was enough nuclear bombs exploded, one a monstrous 57 megaton blast by the Soviet Union, to have destroyed the Earth a couple of times over!With all the nations with nuclear weapons coming to their senses in how dangerous they are and trying to stop making and testing them Communist China suddenly and unexpectedly joined the nuclear club on October 16, 1964 with an Hiroshima type blast in the Gobi Desert making whatever gains in stopping the spread of nuclear weapons a mute point! With Communist China's leadership not willing to stop making and testing their new discovered toy or WMD: Weapon of Mass Destruction.One of if not the best documentary ever made about the both Atomic & Hydrogen Bomb with first time never before shown rare US and USSR as well as Communist China government footage that brings out just how destructive these devices are. Even in peace time nuclear tests have destroyed and polluted, with nuclear radiation, thousands of square miles of sea and land making it both uninhabitable and void of any signs of life. You can just imagine what a real nuclear war could do if a world leader of a country that has the bomb is crazy enough to start one.

I have always been fascinated by the subject of atomic weapons (how they work etc.) and this documentary was a good opportunity to see some decent footage. There is a lot of footage that is displayed in a linear fashion from detonating 100 tons of TNT in the 40's, to a propaganda film that may show the first successful Chinese test from the 60's (date was not given).This documentary appears to give the best sense of what the US military themselves saw, however there are few cuts that go for longer than 10 seconds, which can be annoying for the slower detonations. Watching moving pictures of detonations on DVD on a large TV screen gave a sense of how against nature setting off these things (especially the ones in the megaton range) are. The first few tests conducted were fascinating in a cool way to see science demonstrated, and the raw effects of a new technology. It was interesting to see in detail how the air reacts to a fission reaction being set off, and how nearby objects were affected. But the rest have the fascination of seeing the after-effects of an oil spill, it seems the US military was given license to build and test as many as they liked (and I'm sure the person who gave the Soviets the research was well-intentioned but the Soviets were just as eager to set off large quantities of these just for the hell of it). The ones in the pacific (not too far from Australia I might add) were the most egregious, one of these being constructed and set off is something that should never occur. I still can't believe the US was allowed to launch nukes into space and set them off just to see what happens. Unfortunately I myself am not safely tucked far away from the sites of nuclear explosions, tests were conducted several hundred kilometres north of where I live by the British (how nice of them).In all I'd think that about 15 tests would need to be conducted (by the US) to determine all scenarios and types of nuclear weapons but an astonishing 331 were conducted. A military with these things is like giving a kid a bazooka to play with rather than a slingshot. I think the level of nervousness of the personnel showed in one of the pacific tests is reflective of the nature that these things shouldn't be set off. Like an adult version of a kid constructing a chlorine bomb (or a custom-made firecracker for countries where fireworks are legal) and wondering what havoc will be created when it goes off.Unfortunately the "fun" didn't end after the footage shown in this film, France was detonating nukes underground in Muroroa Atoll (near Australia) in the mid nineties, and more recently Pakistan and India have been polluting their lands with tests.The thing that started it all, Hitler developing nuclear weapons seems a little bit like Hussein and WMD, no evidence was uncovered of a German nuclear program. The Manhattan project and having working nuclear weapons by the mid 40's was completely unnecessary, it is yet another product of American paranoia (I wonder what historical reasons are behind their paranoid streak).

I was somewhat disappointed with this film. This is a hugely important part of human history that has somewhat disappeared in our present time. Although politicians today (2004) like to spit out superlatives about ¡°the most dangerous times¡± and ¡°the world has changed¡±¡¦ Oh Please¡¦. Although unimaginable-- an entire city being destroyed by a terrorist atomic bomb, we MUST try and contemplate thousands of cities being hit by multi megaton bombs. Sorry folks, that is a far greater danger. This doc did little to really set that tone and remind us of those extremely dangerous times. Fog of War did a far better job of that. Still, its worth seeing and I will give his other docs a try

There is no doubt that Kuran, et al, did a great job of getting this footage together. William Shatner on narration and the Moscow Symphony Orchestra for the score are perhaps the part of the most overdramatic combination in the history of documentaries, but these are more forgivable (they are almost a parody of themselves) than this overly sanitized version of American nuclear testing which overlooks practically all of the pertinent policy and moral issues.As a film about some of the straight technical aspects of nuclear testing, though, it does a good job of explaining the purpose of each of the American tests it covers (it only covers the period between 1945-1964, though). The worst part was the final sequence of the testing of the Chinese atomic bomb. This is a HEAVILY edited sequence (the original can be found in the Chinese propaganda film, "Mao's Little Red Video" -- obviously not objective in any sense in its original, but amazingly made even less so by Kuran) splicing MULTIPLE nuclear tests into one sequence with the obvious intent on capitalizing on the effect of "Mongol hoards" in gas masks. He also redoes the audio, removing the narration explaining the technical purposes of their tests and why their soldiers were doing the maneuvers that they were. It is highly suspicious that a director would take the time to outline the technical aspects of American tests as a de-politicizing tactic, and then do exactly the opposite for the Chinese tests.As a documentary about nuclear testing, it fails. Nuclear testing was NOT just about big explosions and the technical ramifications of them -- it contains issues of politics, the environment, diplomacy, morality, ethics, history, social policy, so forth and so forth and so forth. None of which were adequately covered in this film, which concerns itself almost completely with technical aspects -- and so attempts to devoid itself of any of the necessary responsibility of properly addressing the issues of nuclear testing.Visually, it is stunning. It is a valid testament to Kuran's technical abilities. In terms of content, it fails in a variety of ways, ranging from omission to deceptive editing.Teenage boys who delight in big bangs will no doubt love this. For those looking for a more informative and sophisticated documentary about atomic testing, try "The Atomic Cafe" instead. If you are looking for large explosions with only the most technical of context, then you might enjoy this film. For some, I fear, this is the most favored way to deal with nuclear testing -- one deliberately devoid of complexity and controversy.