A team of investigators is asked to get to the bottom of an ongoing emergency in a nuclear plant. Fourteen people have already died and it's up to the investigators to prevent further loss of life, possibly on a catastrophic scale. Meanwhile matters are not helped along by the presence of a crisis manager who insists on doing everything by the book...
So "Red Alert" is a thriller, and a pretty suspenseful one too. Many of the images are striking, such as the little blips representing the desperate flight and death of unfortunate employees. For computers and for certain computer-like minds, the demise of human beings is just a factual element to be tracked and shown on a screen... The ending of the movie contains a nicely ironical joke.
Still, I've got to admit that the plot didn't seem all that intelligible to me : I found it difficult to separate the actual root cause of the problem from competing hypotheses or complicating factors. But that might be me, since I know very little about the functioning of nuclear plants. Anyway, the main themes of the movie are clear enough, such as a warning against Mankind's overreliance on computers, especially when it comes to executing safety protocols or running emergency plans.
Another theme consists of the difficulty of keeping secrets with regard to some great threat. In the movie, the looming threat of a large-scale disaster is supposed to be kept under wraps but things work out differently : husbands warn their wives and fathers warn their families. Thanks to the magic of the telephone panic spreads until half of the city shows up at the airport, begging for a chance to escape. In case you, dear reader, believe in "compare and contrast" you may want to take a look at "Miracle Mile", another movie that deals with panic and flight in the face of (possible) apocalypse. But beware, "Miracle Mile" is even more chilling and terrifying than "Red Alert".
So "Red Alert" is a thriller, and a pretty suspenseful one too. Many of the images are striking, such as the little blips representing the desperate flight and death of unfortunate employees. For computers and for certain computer-like minds, the demise of human beings is just a factual element to be tracked and shown on a screen... The ending of the movie contains a nicely ironical joke.
Still, I've got to admit that the plot didn't seem all that intelligible to me : I found it difficult to separate the actual root cause of the problem from competing hypotheses or complicating factors. But that might be me, since I know very little about the functioning of nuclear plants. Anyway, the main themes of the movie are clear enough, such as a warning against Mankind's overreliance on computers, especially when it comes to executing safety protocols or running emergency plans.
Another theme consists of the difficulty of keeping secrets with regard to some great threat. In the movie, the looming threat of a large-scale disaster is supposed to be kept under wraps but things work out differently : husbands warn their wives and fathers warn their families. Thanks to the magic of the telephone panic spreads until half of the city shows up at the airport, begging for a chance to escape. In case you, dear reader, believe in "compare and contrast" you may want to take a look at "Miracle Mile", another movie that deals with panic and flight in the face of (possible) apocalypse. But beware, "Miracle Mile" is even more chilling and terrifying than "Red Alert".