Robert Aldrich, who blew up the California coast with an atomic bomb at the end of his 1955 Kiss Me Deadly, returns for a crack at the whole world with this generally satisfying political thriller. Dissident army officer Burt Lancaster captures a missile silo and tries to blackmail the president (Charles Durning, in a performance modeled on Mayor Daley the elder) into revealing the truth about Vietnam. Aldrich is trying hard to say some deeply felt things about political morality, but the effect is less corrosive than his more generally pessimistic classic films noirs. Still, it’s a gripping, angry film, well worth seeing despite its occasional lapses in subtlety.
