Inclubabu Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Sammy-Jo Cervantes There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Abegail Noëlle While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

bobwilley This was a very riveting movie, done in documentary or newsreel format. (like an actual news bulletin). Very eye-opening. Would also be appropriate for today's timeframe, it should be aired again!!!Would even more get your attention with all the tension in the world. Not a high-budget movie, but done well. Was done on video instead of film, to simulate realism. Could be used as a New Year Eve's prank, or other type of prank, but the timeframe (this is over 20 years old) might give it away.I have been unable to find this movie, except for a few copies on Amazon at a ridiculously high price (like $40 for a VHS tape !!???) What were they thinking???I would love to find this on DVD???

fx_gent A fascinating and gripping film, I had the pleasure of watching it in 1983 during its premiere on NBC. The concept of showing the film as a series of televised news broadcasts and bulletins was inventive and hearkened back to the days of the War of the Worlds broadcast, giving it something of an edge. Along with the Day After, these two television movies were among the best made in the early 1980s highlighting the dangers of atomic weapons and nuclear war. The comment I hear every so often of this being a bit cheesy is unfair. Given the context of the time, when tensions were still high in the Cold War, it gave perspective of what might happen. The only problem I had, was that the film should have been longer than its originally airing of two hours, spending as much time on what would happen after an atomic explosion as leading up to the event. The best film of this kind since Special Bulletin and Day After, was the recent Dirty War. I can only imagine how this film would be done today, given the expansion of cable news, via 1983 when the networks were the only real source of news.

Mark Mears Though this originally aired (on NBC, if I remember correctly) in 1984, it was prescient in how it depicted news media coverage of a "breaking news" event.Complete with glitzy (for their time) graphics, concerned anchors, wall-to-wall coverage, talking heads, and gripping live reports, it does not seem dated (except for the hair styles!), even today.Though it depicts the coverage of a hostage crisis by a fourth broadcast network, this aired a year before the Fox network came into existence. The RBS network's graphics, promotional spots, and anchors are so realistic that the real network that aired the film really didn't have any choice but to continually remind viewers that what they were watching was fiction. And though we're all familiar today with the news networks' saturation coverage of live events, this originally aired only 4 years after the inception of CNN -- before that network was the major force that it is today.Depicting a gripping series of events, it's as much or more of a commentary on how the news media handles such situations than anything else. The way that the events are presented will seem eerily familiar to anyone in today's world, but remember that terrorism was not a big concern to many people 20 years ago.The acting and production values combine to make for one of the most powerful films ever produced for television. I highly recommend this film not only for its impact, but for its almost too accurate portrayal of events that are all too easy to imagine in today's world.

Seanette I saw about the last 20 minutes of a rerun at about 3am, without the precautionary warnings used in the original airing, and still remember how believable and intensely effective the movie was. Based on what I saw of it and remember after about 15 years [I probably saw this in the late 80s or very early 90s], very well done. I might even add it to my "to rent" list so I can see the whole thing :-). I even woke my grandfather [I was living in his house at the time] to ask him if we knew anyone in Charleston. Once we worked out that it had only been a movie, he was sympathetically amused. His sister had been taken in by the War of the Worlds radio broadcast, so he apparently readily understood how easy it had been for me to be confused by an apparent newscast with no commercials or warnings.