The Day After

At the end of this movie, you'll look up and your first thought will be "Thank God, it's all still here." I was a teenager in the 80's when I saw this on TV and it has always stayed with me.

I love just about anything from the 1980's now and regularly pull out movies from that era- but this is one I just can't see again. However, I'd recommend it to everyone anyhow, to see once. It personalizes the results of nuclear conflict in a way no other movie did before or since.

Funny thing is, the world today feels like it was safer back then, when we were fairly sure that nuclear weapons were only in the hands of (relatively) rational human beings instead of lunatic terrorists.

Yes, some cheesy acting here and there, some melodrama and so forth. But it was an 80s telemovie, so what more could one expect? Okay, to be fair, the portrayal of nuclear devastation and the resulting radiation poisoning is quite good. And to know that almost everyone is doomed is a sobering thought to ponder at the end, after viewing the final scene of two strangers trying to comfort each other in the aftermath of the holocaust.

"The Day After" was one of a series of films made in the 1980's. Of these, only "Testament" could be called a success. The films were part of a massive campaign by the USSR and Western leftists to keep ground-based nukes from Western Europe. The CSPI (Center for Science in the Public Interest), a "disinterested" group that hilariously declared itself non-partisan, led the charge with graphic descriptions of nuclear winter or worse. After deployment and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union, the subject was never broached. The hype was huge - psychiatrists and child psychologists were ready to help grieving students who happened to watch the show, the papers played it big, the media gave it all the free publicity you could want...and it was still an artistic blunder.

Besidess blocking the weapons (not necessarily a bad thing), the movie had two purposes: (1) Visualzie the horrible affects of a nuclear war and just as important (2) make the Soviet Empire and the West morally equivalent - no good or bad guys - just "big guys" and "little guys" I'd expected a powerful, thought-provoking show but instead got a disaster on all fronts (artistic, political and military). The dialogue was possibly the most stilted and amateurish ever presented on screen. It sounded like a high school play at times - awkward & hesitant. Husbands and wives spoke like strangers, family talk was from Ozzie & Harriet, a 6th grader asks, "Daddy, whut's radiation?" Folks on the brink of starvation resist the only method for replanting crops. No one has heard of an EMP and (you have to smile) when it hits, EVERYONE stays in their car trying to start the engines, oblivious to the zillion others around them with the same problem. Politically it's a phony Kumbaya Moment. In crimson Kansas folks greet the Soviet closure of West Berlin with a shrug - no expressions of outrage. At the end, the President (read Reagan) gives a ridiculously upbeat speech - we have not surrendedred and he invokes God and patriotism. All the while, victims moan and the camera shows devastation. Apparently the purpose of the awful dialogue was to make folks sound like "simple folk" who loved mom, pop, God & corn. Although set in the 80's, the viewer for some reason kept getting glimpses of what looked like film from the 1950's.

It is the acting that really "bombed". Poor Jason Robards comes in for the most criticism. Unlike everyone else, his clothes stay clean and fresh. He appears drunk or doped during the entire film, stumbling and slurring his way through the most unlikely of circumstances. It's as if the writers tried to substitue incoherence and mangled steps for serious lines. Amy Madigan is present as a pregnant woman and whines as usual. Steve Gutenburg is a student with embarrasingly poor lines. John Lithgow plays an exasperated know-it-all. The extras hired to portray victims never spoke a word - did the bomb suddenly remove the gift of speech? Emotions were surface - you feel as if the actor could just as easily cry as laugh. The chemistry between the romantic couples was about as heated as a male model and a beauty queen.

This is too bad because the few good scenes were very affective - the harried soldiers, the moment the bomb hit, the panorama of utter destruction and that final tragedy when student met the daughter and both had lost their hair. For obvious reasons, the start of the war was obscure - after all, who cares about blame in such a catastrophe? Who attacked first, who initiated the first nuclear strike, why did the USSR block Berlin in the first place? I kept waiting to see the rest of the world but that would have entailed creativity and another story. In this case the writers were inadvertently correct to focus on this locality. The outside world is a mysterious unknown, like Medieval times when one only knew the village in which they were born and died. The film was promptly criticized by Sagan (CSPI) as too "optimistic". You can't please all the folks all the time, I guess. My grade - C-

Hello. I remember all the "buzz" about this show when it first appeared on television in 1983. At the time, I was prolly at work and also didn't have a VCR then. Now that I have seen it in its entirety, it is an absolutely frightening experience. Now, the dangers of nuclear war are more relevant: India and Pakistan have it... North Korea has it...Iran it trying to get it... Israel has it... the list goes on... The acting in "The Day After" is awesome. Jason Robards is amazing. I was pleasantly surprised by Steven Guttenberg. He's known mainly for those "Police Academy" movies, but he gave an fantastic performance. That sequence where you first see several closeup shots of the Kansas City skyline is ominous, because you kind of have an idea of what will happen next. I can see "The Day After" being remade, to take advantage of our modern technological advances. All in all, the film serves as a reminder that there will never be any winners in a nuclear conflict.

Just happening to catch this little gem from the 80's recently on cable, all the memories flood back from the original airing on ABC when I thought: "So, what's the big deal?!".

Having known someone who saw the film in a preview in Lawrence, KS and having been told about the people in the audience sobbing hysterically, I was expecting so much more that I got when I finally had the opportunity to see it for myself. It is only the context of history that now lays bare the hilariously tacky overacting and absurdly ridiculous plot that obliterates Kansas City, but spares the ICBM fields from any strikes, which in reality would have been the converse (in other words-Buh Bye, Lawrence). Not to mention the embrace of the idea of a local skirmish culminating in a 'bolt from the blue' nuclear attack on the US.

All the bunny huggin' liberals writing the glowing reviews of this film also bring me back to the 80's, when the very same no-nukes crowd went absolutely crazy during Reagan's brinksmanship with the (now FORMER) USSR.

This is a quite dramatic, and suspenseful film nonetheless, but to me represents the zenith of the 80's anti-nuclear movement with a masterfully executed attempt at affecting public opinion through production of a straight propaganda piece. Contextually, a great historical snapshot of the opposing side of the strident debate about deployment of the Pershing II in Europe, the MX missle, the 'leaked' planning studies for the aftermath of WWIII, and Reagan's hardline position against the Soviets, all of which scared the bejesus out of the aforementioned bunny huggers.

Of course, with twenty years now in the rearview mirror, the USSR fallen, Reagan vindicated, and after a massive nuclear build-down, it only serves as punctuation to this film, a nice little postscript of historical perspective to complete the circle begun in 1983.

Highly recommended.