The Sound Board

The film's structure is teasing - the 19 minutes get played out 4 times, each time revealing another aspect of the unfolding terrifying events. For me it worked absolutely brilliantly and of course gets you absolutely desperate to know - WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN? Will Chicago get annihilated? Is all out nuclear war inevitable?

Your final warning - turn away now if you don't want to know.

And the answer is - you won't know. You will never know. The audience is right on the edge of their seats and the credits roll. Everyone has cried "cop out", felt cheated and lets the internet know about it.

I'm not saying this was a uniquely brilliant way to end the film, but I do think it worked phenomenally well. The final 19 minutes you spent with the president whom you have never seen, and they do a mean thing - they first make you think he's playing golf (ie Trump). Instead, it's Man Of The People Idris Elba and - just goona say it - it's Obama. And 90% of the audience around the world goes "oh thank God".

Then you realise - is it really "thank God"? This is the fantasy. This terrifying fiction is plausible, and Trump is the reality.

THEN you realise - no human being can make this call. The president is alone with the 32 year old with the nuclear codes, whose life up to this point has been spent understanding every option open to the president so he can calmly explain them and let the big guy make that final judgement. In reality, faced with not knowing for sure if the missile will pulverise Chicago and STILL not knowing who fired it, there are no good choices. He wants to hand it over to the 32 year old with the briefcase.

The effect of not knowing the ending left me deeply unsettled. What the lack of closure does is to rack up the tension even MORE. This stuff could happen at any second, and good options there are none. The entire world's fate rests on the CHARACTER of the President of the United States.

One of the scariest movies I ever saw.