{"id":76501,"date":"2026-08-14T23:41:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T15:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=76501"},"modified":"2026-08-14T23:41:00","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T15:41:00","slug":"talky-cold-war-reagan-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=76501","title":{"rendered":"Talky Cold War Reagan Drama"},"content":{"rendered":"


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The Brink of War<\/strong><\/u> is now playing in theaters.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Writer-director Michael Russell Gunn\u2019s well-meaning feature film debut, The Brink of War, takes a wordy, academic approach to chronicling the two momentous days in October 1986 when US President Ronald Reagan (Jeff Daniels) and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev (Jared Harris) sat across a table in a house in Reykjavik, Iceland hoping to strike a landmark nuclear disarmament deal designed to keep the Cold War from finally turning into a hot one. (Impressively, the film was shot at the actual location<\/u> and in the same rooms where the leaders spoke.)<\/p>\n

As thoughtful and earnest as the drama is, it\u2019s also pretty chill for a movie about trying to prevent nuclear war. The events may take place at the peak of the Cold War, and the movie reiterates that this meeting is the last chance for such a deal to happen, but The Brink of War lacks the urgency that any film about, say, the Cuban Missile Crisis (e.g., Thirteen Days<\/u>) possesses, where the viewer truly feels the global stakes and intense pressure the President is under.<\/p>\n

The Brink of War is very stagebound, often feeling like a play adapted for the screen, but it is just as reminiscent of those solid, actor-driven HBO films of the 1990s<\/u> that dutifully covered biographical or then-topical subjects. (Angel Studios\u2019 other recent Presidential pic, Young Washington<\/u>, at least offered cinemagoers some flintlock-firin\u2019, tomahawk-throwin\u2019 action scenes to keep it from feeling like TV movie fare.) Still, if this was made as an HBO movie in the \u201890s, it probably would\u2019ve won an Emmy or two.<\/p>\n

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The Brink of War is most alive whenever Reagan and Gorbachev are negotiating one on one, challenging each other\u2019s positions and calling out each country\u2019s hypocrisies. Things get heated between them \u2014 as issues ranging from human rights, religion, and the US\u2019s Strategic Defense Initiative are raised \u2014 with each leader standing their political and philosophical ground. These are two men trying to find a way to connect with one another, each knowing this is their chance to make history and accomplish something great and lasting. But they each possess their fair share of pride, stubbornness and mistrust.<\/p>\n

Jeff Daniels and Jared Harris solidly handle the material as if they were onstage together in a two-hander, their characters each probing the other for weakness or advantage. Daniels doesn\u2019t quite capture the specificities of Reagan\u2019s voice and mannerisms, but he ably conveys the 40th President\u2019s convictions. <\/p>\n

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