Review: No nukes are good nukes in 'Countdown to Zero'

Easily the scariest movie of the year, "Countdown to Zero" is sort of "An Inconvenient Truth about Nuclear Bombs."

Like Al Gore's warning of impending environmental disaster, "Countdown" is an activist documentary, a targeted wake-up call to a world that has calmed to the idea of a nuclear holocaust because one hasn't happened in the past half-century.

As the film makes abundantly clear, just because we haven't seen cities or nations or continents annihilated yet doesn't mean it still can't happen. Whether by accident, miscommunication, political insanity or terrorist attack, the possibility of mass destruction is very real.

Director Lucy Walker lays out the grim facts clearly, and the result will not help you sleep at night. The sections on Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons, and Iran, which is trying to build them, are particularly nightmarish.

Also included are graphic descriptions of just how much damage a nuclear bomb can do, a history of the nuclear arms race and too many instances of close calls to make anyone comfortable.

This is all delivered by talking-head experts from former President Jimmy Carter to Russia's Mikhail Gorbachev to outed CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, augmented by interviews with disturbingly clueless citizens from around the world.

The film's purpose is to encourage those countries with nuclear arsenals to begin eliminating such weapons, a path the U.S. is already on. That's the hopeful "Countdown to Zero."

The problem is: Some governments and cultures are downright proud and happy to have such awful weapons in their arsenal. Will a documentary change their minds?

Doubtful. But it can't hurt.

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