Deterrence

Not a bad premise, but inexperience by the writer/director made for sloppy scenes and an overall poor execution. I think the delay between the final draft of the script and filming also rendered the proposed nuclear tensions with Iraq as outmoded and ultimately silly. However taking into account the all out propaganda blitz to invade Iraq after 9/11/01, the greenlighting of this film was probably to support early predictive programming to implant the narrative that Iraq potential had nukes. I really liked Kevin Pollack's performance as the president, but he was the standout. The choice of the writer to have him choose to nuke Baghdad even though he knew that Iraq's Nikes were fake was overall bad and made the president character a straight up psychopath. Pollack did his best to humanize the poorly written character. Comparing this film to the classic Failsafe is understandable, but it makes the viewer expect more from this film or else question their memory that Failsafe was actually any good.