Dr Strangelove - reviewed by Thomas Rosie

Dr Strangelove is a 1964 Stanley Kubrik film set during the Cold War, when an American General, hilariously named "Jack D Ripper" plans to action a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union and bring an end to that terrible thing called communism that has been threatening the world's freedom for many many years. It really has.

As soon as i heard this was a Kubrik film chosen by Shane, I expected to expect the unexpected, and I was right, all I knew was that the book was very popular and it was about the cold war, other than that I knew nothing else. But this is certainly not like any war film I've ever seen, in fact, not sure I'd call it a war film as such really. But more a comical take on international relations during a world crisis, particularly between the Americans and the British.

Most of the film is set in a war room, where we see politicians and diplomats all discussing how to prevent the nuclear strike. I say discussing, more the Brits and the Americans accusing each other of not knowing what they're doing, and ironically end up fighting amongst themselves more than actually coming up with a solution, one of my favourite parts is where they're caught tussling with a camera, one accuses the other of taking pictures with it, whilst the other says he was trying to stop it being planted on him. Neither of them owned up to the camera belonging to them. Of course this sort of thing would never happen nowadays so need not worry.

I did find this film very very odd indeed, I will admit that I watched half of it quite baffled, but I did laugh quite a lot at the portrayal of British uncertainty in decision making, the American way -gung-ho, shoot first ask questions later without consequence. And the general view that anything that is bad, wrong or evil is always at the hands of those damn "Commies".

A fun, easy film to view with lots of funny elements and certainly many relatable messages hidden under the mask of comedy that you can take as you will.

I score this film 3 capitalist pig dogs out of 5