Fail Safe

It is the Cold War, and a U.S. bomber is ordered, by mistake, to drop a nuclear warhead on Moscow. Stephen Frears stages Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler's novel as a live black-and-white CBS broadcast, with Walter Cronkite introducing it. The President (Richard Dreyfuss) and General Bogan (Brian Dennehy) work the problem from separate rooms, each waiting to hear what the other will say.