I skimmed through most of the movie. What a waste as the movie could have been done in half the time.

If this is an example of the U.S. National Security system, this country is in a world of hurt.

few minutes of the countdown in the first half. It was like someone burned the script in the middle of the movie.

that the ending was really unsatisfactory. Maybe I'll skip it.

The film is broken up into thirds. The same occurrence told from three perspectives. Watch the first one and you'll get the idea. The rest is pretty redundant.

I believe the general consensus is that the first 1/3 was great; The pacing and the acting was on point.

The back 2/3 was a disappointing slog, a seemingly endless amount of shots of actors staring at various screens with a “F*ck! What do we do?” look on their faces.

As a person who has had lifelong effects from the Cold WA (we lived next to a potential target, Boeing) I initially saw this film as a Cold War nightmare.
As it kept replaying, I saw Hegseth, Noem, and all the other administration idiots in those places and our assured demise. At least during the Cold War I was assured there were serious. level-headed people in charge.
The only sympathy I felt in the film was when the Secretary chose not to get on the helicopter because that is the choice everyone is faced with and his was a valid option. Many of us came out of that time with an understanding that life is conditional.

I was curious why the film was made thinking it had to have been someone who experienced the Cold War but it was written by a 40-something ex-NBC News boss. Kathryn Bigelow was of the age to have experienced the Cold War and Travis Air Force Base was near where she grew up. It would be nice to hear her personal experience.

The glaring fault of the story was the omission of waiting until the bomb hit the US and then deciding.

The film affected me emotionally due to our Cold War past and now I have to realize that the people in charge of our country are incapable of handling something like this. Nothing will help us. Also, I realized young people do not have personal experience with the end of civilization as we did - now it is just trump pulling the levers.

As a film though, I did not like the clunky replaying of the same discussions. There are so many devices that could have shown it differently.

the third got on my nerves, even though we got to see other stuff unrelated to the National Security Council briefing. Stuff like the deputy NSA's pregnant wife working for the senator who bolted out of a hearing and ignored her as he was leaving for Raven Rock. Or the SecDef checking out.

Anyone else note the irony that when POTUS is notified he is entertaining children, just as Bush 2 was when the World Trade Center was hit?

I was left also wanting a progression of the story, rather than retelling the same story from three viewpoints. And I was more than bothered by the fact that we now have nothing but incompetent a$$kissers in all the Cabinet roles, with many of the knowledgeable career personnel fired or laid off or bought off into retirement. The movie reinforced how vulnerable we are because of this regime.

We both found it engrossing. Seeing the same time period from three different perspectives, I found very effective. And, while I personally would have loved an ending, I think that ending the story at that time was a point in itself.

I think that it was very effective in promoting conversations about a subject that many of us thought we had moved past. It renewed my thankfulness that our family will have only one more generation after mine.