By Dawn's Early Light

Entertaining enough little thriller in the vein of a Fail Safe. It has a relatively fun cast (Powers Booth, James Earl Jones, Martin Landau, etc), but at times feels like the TV movie it was. There are a couple of twists from the normal formula in this (especially in how the resolution occurs), but generally it's an ok but nothing special version of this familiar story.

Not bad.

Personal relationships define the future of the human kind, not he command structures.

Watching this in 2021, this movie hasn't held up over time. The Presidential succession crisis is interesting, but handled much better in other works. The interplay with the People's Republic of China and the USSR seems off and is underdeveloped. Good model work, but with so much of the plot happening on planes, the scope of the war was lost, and the effect of nuclear weapons denotations in the movie is just wrong. James Earl Jones' acting was as usual was a high point.

Psychopathy and programming (human and computer) threaten apocalypse. Somewhat interesting thematically, with some good performances and characters. Sholder's direction is in some ways routine, but he often seems to have a kind of direct approach, as though he has a strong desire to avoid generic crap as much as he possibly can, and maybe throw a few curveballs to keep the audience amused and awake, within the limitations of the tasks he has been set. Maybe he is best described as being wry.