‘The Brink of War’ Gives Reagan’s Reykjavik Summit the History Channel Treatment

Spoiler alert: The world did not end in 1986. Historical movies are tricky things. The fates of your characters are foretold to anyone who was alive at the time, and to anyone else in possession of a smart phone and a search engine. So writers and directors need to make a judgment call and determine how much or how little their audience knows going into the film.Too much information and you drown the viewer in expository dialogue; too little and the audience is lost. “The Brink of War,” in leaning heavily on the former, comes across as a well-made, well-intentioned History Channel original whose heavy hand makes it good, but not great. Its depiction of the 1986 Reykjavík Summit where the leaders of the US and Soviet Union briefly flirted with abolishing nuclear weapons altogether is perfect for a senior cramming on a term paper about the event, and a pleasant, well-shot docudrama for the rest of us.The real star of the movie is the judgment and wisdom of President Ronald Reagan. Jeff Daniels plays him well — “well,” as Reagan himself says repeatedly throughout the film. He brings spark and spirit to the performance without descending into caricature.The writing allows Reagan’s plainspoken decency and moral conviction to be rightly seen as the final straw that broke the back of the Soviet Union’s evil communist empire.Mr. Daniels has taken a break from playing liberal icons like former FBI director James Comey and fictional newsman Will McAvoy, in Aaron Sorkin’s “The Newsroom,” to assume the role of the Gipper. He does a good job with a sympathetic script that depicts how the homespun wisdom of one man helped end the Cold War without firing a shot. A scene where he talks to the mounted taxidermist heads on the wall of his room in Iceland before spilling chicken salad on the front of his shirt is a highlight, showing a regular man who draws strength from simplicity. Auditory flashbacks to the 1981 assassination attempt on the President, as well as a scene that highlights the scar on Reagan’s chest from the gunshot wound he received, display the heavy hand that mars an otherwise good movie.Jared Harris has received a communist promotion from his Soviet chemist Valery Legasov in the miniseries “Chernobyl” to Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in this film. Harris plays the role with a touch of bombast I am not sure is historically accurate. Gorbachev’s command of the English language as displayed in this movie is most definitely a historical inaccuracy though, as both he and Reagan relied on their interpreters for this and subsequent meetings. However, it’s understandable from a dramatic standpoint. Nancy Reagan (no appearance from her astrologist is played by Hope Davis and is awkwardly shoehorned into the movie, since she did not go to Iceland for the summit. “Go be great,” she says to her husband in one telephone conversation.Hope Davis as Nancy Reagan in ‘The Brink of War.’ Angel StudiosThere’s a worrying trend in movies where historical events of the most mundane variety are presented as “Epic Turning Points after which the World Was Never the Same.” On the surface, the Reykjavik summit between Reagan and Gorbachev would seem to qualify as an epic event. But “The Brink of War” gives away the game in the title, artificially elevating stakes that were already sky-high. No, the two superpowers were not minutes away from annihilation in 1986 — that was during the Able Archer NATO military exercise in 1983, which the Soviets mistook as a prelude to war. Instead, the movie’s souped-up premise leads into a negotiation that seems to be more about litigating the two sides of the Cold War than about an arms summit. A subplot about the CIA and KGB teams in the basement exchanging jibes over a bathroom is particularly heavy-handed. Thank goodness there’s only one instance of “as you know” in dialogue.In one scene, Reagan and Secretary of State George Shultz (J.K. Simmons) discuss the concept of legacy. “That means the next generation is better off because of something you did,” Shultz tells Reagan.Reagan’s onscreen legacy has certainly been undergoing a reassessment in movies recently. After being depicted as cruel and heartless in “The Reagan’s” miniseries in 2003 (“those who live in sin shall die in sin”) he was portrayed more sympathetically by Tim Matheson on TV in “Killing Reagan” in 2016.This film completes the arc, showing us a Reagan who was steadfast and committed not just to taking on communism, but advancing human rights. It may be that this version of Reagan is the sanitized Republican of the moment which Hollywood wants us to see. The movie has Reagan quote the phrase “nation of immigrants” multiple times without showing us the budget-slashing, union-busting conservative at his core.We were better off as a nation because Reagan served as president and better off because, forty years ago this October, he went to Iceland. Unfortunately, you may not be better off after watching “The Brink of War,” and it is a shame that a great event did not get a better movie.If you’re in the mood for a visually stunning take on historical events that has all the subtlety of a textbook entry, yet a rock-solid performance from Jeff Daniels, you’ll go to DEFCON 1 over “The Brink of War.” Otherwise, stay at home like Nancy did and check it out when it reaches streaming.

‘The Brink of War’ Gives Reagan’s Reykjavik Summit the History Channel Treatment

‘The Brink of War’ Gives Reagan’s Reykjavik Summit the History Channel Treatment

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