While campaigning in Colorado, a snowstorm forces the president to stop in a diner and deal with a sudden nuclear threat in Deterrence. The film premiered during the 1999 Toronto Film Festival before getting a theatrical release in March 2000. Unfortunately, it only earned less than 25% of its production budget back at the box office. This certainly explains why I never really heard of the film until checking filmmaker Rod Lurie’s IMDb page. In fact, I was on Hoopla to borrow The Contender when I saw that this film was also in their catalog.

Deterrence starts with a black and white montage of presidential speeches in its opening minutes. Once we get beyond the title credits, the film transitions from black and white to color. It’s perfectly understandable if you think there’s something going on with the film. My initial thought was that Lurie had filmed the entire thing in black and white. This isn’t to say anything bad about black and white film but it was perplexing at first. Anyway, the film’s $800,000 production budget means using very few locations on screen. One is the diner and the other is the IBS news station.

Rod Lurie’s political thriller has the United States facing a nuclear doomsday, not unlike the events of Dr. Strangelove. A key difference is that Deterrence isn’t a satire whatsoever. Instead, it deals with U.S. President Walter Emerson (Kevin Pollak) and key advisors traveling with him during his Colorado campaign swing prior to Super Tuesday. The president is joined by White House Chief of Staff Marshall Thompson (Timothy Hutton), National Security Advisor Gayle Redford (Sheryl Lee Ralph), Secret Service agents, and an IBS news crew following the campaign. The news crew comes in handy when the White House offers exclusive video coverage to the network. In most situations, Emerson and company would try to get to a secure location. Due to the blizzard, they don’t have much of a choice. But in any event, they make the best of the situation.

The downside of setting up command at a remote diner is that there are people both working and eating there. Obviously, they get the quick Secret Service screening for weapons. Unfortunately, as we learn later, the Secret Service did not quite do its due diligence. Anyway, things get hectic as soon as the news reports on Iraqi President Uday Hussein leading an invasion into Kuwait. Mind you, President Emerson and his team learn this through the news and not through their own administration. In launching the invasion, they also kill a UN peacekeeping mission, many of which are members of the U.S. armed forces. What happens next is that Emerson delivers an ultimatum to Hussein: turn himself into the U.S. Embassy in Iraq or Emerson will authorize a nuclear strike on Baghdad. The latter of which shocks everyone because the president kept it to himself!

It isn’t just that Emerson and the Iraqis are going back and forth. As things progress throughout Deterrence, Emerson no longer has the backing of his advisors, let alone the First Lady. Ralph (Sean Astin) delivers his feelings to the president but it becomes adamant that nobody will change the president’s mind. The damage starts well before the codes are authorized–diner owner Harvey (Badja Dola) is killed after shooting Captain Coddington (J. Scott Shonka), a military officer carrying the nuclear football. If Harvey thinks this would prevent the president from getting the nuclear codes, he is mistaken. The president gets them from the Joint Chiefs, leading to Admiral Miller’s resignation. Ultimately, Emerson decides that he will announce his withdrawal from the campaign.

One of the things I love about Deterrence is the decision to make Emerson the first Jewish President of the United States. The film’s release predates Al Gore’s selection of Senator Joseph Lieberman on the Democratic presidential ticket. Anyway, it’s something that 2000 me would have loved about the film had I heard about it back then. The Lieberman nomination is what really began to drive my interest in politics. Like Lieberman, Emerson is also Jewish. Despite being leader of the free world, he is not immune to anti-Jewish hate. The Iraqi envoy to the UN does not take Emerson seriously, citing both his being Jewish and appointed to the vice presidency before ascending to the presidency. The idea of appointing a vice president is a theme that Lurie revisits in The Contender.

Despite its 2008 setting, Deterrence is an alternate history film with a release date that predates both 9/11 and war on terror. Nobody could have probably predicted what would transpire in the first few years of the 21st century, including a war with Iraq. Not because of similar events but because of a vice president wanting to finish the job and insisting that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Hussein had to go but it should never have been through war. If you ask me, Iran had always been the bigger threat. The film’s events certainly beg the question of what we would do in a similar situation. I cannot envy President Emerson f0r making his decision. If anything, he would have been more open with his team.

Twenty-five years later, Deterrence remains a thought-provoking thriller.

DIRECTOR/SCREENWRITER: Rod Lurie
CAST: Kevin Pollak, Timothy Hutton, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Mark Thompson, Kathryn Morris, Michael Mantell, Joe McCrackin, Ryan Cutrona, Scoot Powell, Badja Djola, Rigg Kennedy, J. Scott Shonka, James Handy, James Curly, June Lockhart, with Clotiloe Courau and Sean Astin

Paramount Classics released Deterrence in theaters on March 10, 2000. Grade: 4/5

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