Most of us agree that a world without nuclear weapons would be a much safer place and that proliferation is doubly dangerous.
Which means that writer-director Lucy Walker's polemic, following her excellent Waste Land and Blindsight, lacks a certain force.
This film is very good on some of the near-misses to Armageddon we have managed over the years, such as the time that Boris Yeltsin, then the Russian premier, was sober enough to realise that America was not about to bomb the Soviet Union when his nuclear alarm button went off.
Other dangerous moments are recalled as Walker almost screams for a properly complete anti-proliferation treaty. She also marks the sad moment when Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev almost achieved the impossible. Way back in 1961, President Kennedy said that the weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us. And look where it has got us, with Pakistan armed with a nuclear bomb and Iran nearly there.
We've gone backwards rather than forwards. To watch a film such as this is to shudder all over again.
Countdown To Zero
Cert: PG
