6th HOF- Fail Safe

Nominated By: Neiba


A cold-war movie with a theme very similar to Dr. Strangelove but with a very different view of it!
Great performances, amazing script and moral ambiguity all together in a powerful movie about true courage and patriotism.

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Letterboxd

I've always held this movie in high regard, but it's been a few years so I'm looking forward to watching it again. They did a live television remake several years ago that was also quite good.

Just watched Fail Safe which I'd never seen before. Excellent film. I was on the edge of my seat! The whole thing was intense, the acting , the storyline, the decisions and all done without any special effects or even expensive sets.
This film must've had a mesmerising effect on audiences in its year of release 1964, as they just would've lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. So interesting to see the blame being laid on the 'machines' and all the talk about machines using their own 'minds' .

Good film. Thanks Neiba

Even though I've yet to participate in any of these Hall of Fames, I like to think about potential films I'd nominate if I did participate. Fail Safe is always one of the first choices to spring to mind. I watched it for the first time a couple of years ago and I was blown away by it. I've seen it a couple times since and now consider it one of my favorite films. Brilliant. Bold. Intense. Frightening. Surprisingly dark. Great lead performance by Henry Fonda. A powerful ending that will stay with you long after you watch it. The film was overshadowed by Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, which was released earlier the same year, but I think Fail Safe is the better film.

Excellent nomination, Neiba. Hopefully this will boost the film's exposure enough to land it on the 60's Countdown.

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Capt, I liked Fail Safe a lot more than Dr Strangelove.

In the UK news today , I can't help thinking about the film!
RAF jets scrambled after Russian aircraft seen off Cornwall http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31530840

I think the trouble is not that Dr. Strangelove is necessarily a better film, but that it makes it so difficult to take Fail-Safe seriously. It was certainly a problem for me for the first half hour of the film, I kept thinking of Dr. Strangelove and wanting to laugh. By comparison, Fail-Safe does look rather stiff.

But once that was out of the way, it does become a remarkably tense (and surprisingly bleak) film. I particularly liked the scenes where the president is on the phone to the Russian president and the translator is sat next to him, translating what he must be hearing down the phone. Of course he wouldn't have just one man translating, so it's not plausible, but it is effective cinematically. Likewise the conceit that there would be no way of recalling the bombers, no 'manual override' or coded order to abort the mission. Liking this film does depend on your ability to suspend disbelief.

At first I thought it looked quite old fashioned by the standards of the time, but the look of the film grew on me as well. The acting was pretty good.

I can't say that war films, or films where men in suits sit around talking are my favourite sorts of film, though, and there's better examples of each. I didn't think the 'dangers of relying on machines' theme was particularly new or interesting either.

I'm worried I'll find to like this more than Strangelove.

Well, I think it's important that you don't compare Strangelove with Fail-Safe! They have the year in common and the main theme, which is the cold war, but apart from that they are completely different movies! One is a dark comedy, the other is a drama! They are both among my all time favourites, I can't say which one I like the most, really!

I wasn't trying to compare the two, not at all. Currently Dr. Strangelove is my favorite war film and my third favorite film of all time, and I was half serious, half jokingly worried that its position might be in jeopardy if I find to really like Fail-Safe. According to the posts made so far, it looks really promising and I find underrated films loved by MoFos to eventually be love by me as well.

Thinking again, I shouldn't care whether or not Dr. Strangelove will step down from the bronze medal. After all, the purpose of the Hall of Fames is to find new films and hopefully get to love, at least one of them.

Sorry if I worded my original first post wrongly.

It's ok Gatsby, I think you can't help thinking about the two together like Thursday says too. I certainly thought about Dr Strangelove while I was watching Fail Safe, you can't help it. Having said that tho I found Fail Safe so tense that I couldn't think of anything else after the story got underway !

I'm not part of this HoF either, but like Captain I had considered Fail Safe for my nomination.

I was blown away by the bleak premise of the film. Every aspect of the film: cinematography, music score, acting, directing...furthers the feeling of growing doom. The scene where the President offers up the destruction of New York City, was one helluva a terse moment. What a powerful script.

With all that I was still unprepared for the gut wrenching ending. Wow....Nothing is more somber than nuclear war.

Fail Safe

Funny thing is, I didn't know this was a Sidney Lumet film until the opening credits. He's one of my favorite directors of all time, I love everything he's made from The Network to 12 Angry Men.

I once imagined a war film made by Sidney Lumet, not knowing the existence of Fail Safe. Dreams comes true in this film, as he delivers everything I expected. I think war works really well with Lumet with his signature tight script and acting, limited but thrilling space, and always voicing out his views of the world in films, mostly of those that if people listened to them we would live in a better place.

So far Fail Safe is my favorite film of the Hall of Fame. Neiba is a certified awesome guy from me already, but this nomination secured his position.

I'm glad you liked it that much, Gatsby! You're awesome aswell!

I don't have anything new to add here. I agree with what TN said about the tension and bleakness of the film and I also most appreciated the scenes of the president on the phone with the translator. I also agree that this film relies heavily on the viewer's ability to suspend disbelief.

That said, it was a very good film, and I'm glad I watched it, but I don't think it's quite the great film some have made it out to be. I did like it a hell of a lot more than Strangelove, though.

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This is what I wrote about Fail Safe in my logbook thread.

http://www.movieforums.com/community...26#post1261426

I've seen this movie before, so it was a re-watch, but it's a great movie, and I'm glad that it was nominated for the Hall of Fame.

This is a fantastic movie that seems to have gotten lost behind Dr. Strangelove, but in my opinion, this is the better of the two movies. This is a realistic thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat from start to finish. It will make you wonder about how safe we really are from a nuclear war, and if it's possible that something like this could actually happen in real life.

This movie features an outstanding cast, including several actors who later became known for comedy, (Walter Matthau, Dom DeLuise and Larry Hagman), but they showed here that they could have been great dramatic actors as well. Henry Fonda is superb as the president, who has an unimaginable decision to make.

The movie may feel a little bit dated, but you have to remember that this movie was filmed in the 1960s, and they didn't have the same technology that we have now. If you can keep that in mind while watching this movie, you'll get the most out of it, but don't miss seeing this great movie.

I saw Fail-Safe with my parents as a little kid and I was bored to death. I saw it again about 20 years ago and liked it a lot. I saw the live television remake and I liked that a lot. I just watched this movie again and my opinion of it has improved even more.

This is a no BS movie; a quick introduction to the players, and then it's down to business. This is a very wll paced movie that doesn't waste time. Some have said that the movie looks dated, but I think that adds to it's effectiveness. Brilliantly directed and acted, it is intense and terrifying right down to a terrific ending.

I'm in the camp that prefers this movie over Dr. Strangelove. Let's not forget this movie when it's time for our 60's ballots. This is a fantastic and underseen movie, and with the tie-in to the upcoming 60's list, it's a great nomination.

really great brutal movie, like a tragic version of Dr. Strangelove (so far)

It's not fair, but I can't really judge Fail-Safe properly due to Dr. Strangelove. I just can't take it seriously. I just keep thinking of the farcical nature of Strangelove, and somehow that just makes Fail-Safe seem a lot sillier for keeping a straight face. Not fair, I know, but I can't help it.

Another thing that kind of irks me, it doesn't really seem like SPOILERSSSSSSSSSSSS a president would just nuke the sh*t out of his own country, even as a way to show good will or whatever.

It's not a terrible movie or anything like that, my attention was kept the entire duration and the dream sequence was really well done as well as the final montage, but I don't really think of it as a real deserving entry into the hall of fame.

Fail Safe

Well I hate Strangelove, so it was real easy to not compare the two for me. That being said, there was too much disbelief in the film for me to fully enjoy it as Jiraffe and Thursday have stated. Fonda was the glue that held the film to be respectable, but I often wonder about the credibility of his character. Fonda did have a really good performance though, but certainly a president would not lay a bomb on his country just to even the playing field. I wish more happened in the film as it seemed to move through pretty slowly.

For Lumet, this is my least favorite that I have seen. Kind of disappointed because I thought it would be something that I would really enjoy, but I was definitely underwhelmed after reading it's praise on here.

I didn't even think much about Dr. Strangelove while watching it.

Maybe he would in such extreme circumstances. Because killing 5 million Americans might save the lives of 100 million. If Russia goes crazy because of the loss of Moscow without a corresponding American loss they just order all their planes into the US and destroy all major cities.

Deserving? From the 5 HoF I participated the only movies that I felt were truly deserving entries IMO are (from the ones that I remember):

City Lights
Stalker
Madoka
Nausicaa
Dr. Strangelove
Late Spring
All Quiet in the Western Front
8 1/2

That's ca. 10% of the movies I watched for thesre HoF's. Sansho is tad bit melodramatic and simplistic (IMO, I still would put it into my top 100 movies, but not top 50).