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One of my all time favorites.

Fantastic!

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

It's hard to imagine an American movie like this. The dirty bomb is not seen to explode. We only know it's gone off because London trembles. Even if we had seen it detonate, a dirty bomb is not a patch on a thermonuclear device. Only a few shots are fired and nobody's head disintegrates. There are no sneering greaseball villains, only devout men and women and their children. There is full frontal nudity during decontamination but it is handled so matter of factly, and the bodies themselves are so ordinary, that one feels only embarrassment for the characters.I won't go into the plot in any detail. Basically its about a group of radical Muslims who detonate a dirty bomb in London, and the attempt of British control agents to prevent it and then to contain it. That's about it.The movie is not sensationalistic in any way and is sometimes a bit hard to follow. One of the principals is an attractive Muslim police officer who has to explain to her colleagues (and to us groundlings) that only a tiny fraction of Muslims are fanatics and so forth, as if we needed it. (We didn't need the speech because the film illustrates the point.) It makes a few cogent points. One police officer observes that they know 90 percent of what the IRA are up to, and yet a few attacks still get through. How can they effectively prevent attacks by radical Muslims about whom they know practically nothing? Well -- they can't, of course, and neither can anyone else. All it takes to pull off such an event is a little organization, a knowledge of chemistry, and a willingness to die. It's like murdering a President or a monarch. If you want to do it badly enough, it can be done.The British police are seen playing roughhouse with the captured organizer of the plot -- dunking his head in a bath tub to make him talk about the next target, and so forth. During his interrogation the organizer mentions atrocity against Muslims in Kabul and Bagdhad as an explanation for the attack. The police remind him that he has a wife and child and that they are now in custody, but the organizer isn't perturbed. "What will this accomplish?" they ask him. "You know there will be retaliation." And he says placidly, comfortable in his skin, "We expect your retaliation. It is what unites us and divides you." Once social organizations get into these kinds of conflicts, they seem to turn into schoolyard fist fights. Push-Pull machines. One side says we're doing this because you hit us first. The other side says, maybe, but I was just hitting you because you hit me yesterday. Oh, yeah? What about last week when you knocked the books out of my hand? Well I only did that because your father insulted my grandfather one thousand years ago.I realize the movie deals with a real subject and that the subject is serious, and I realize my example is silly. Yet there does seem to be something in human nature that drives us into conflict with one another, and of course it's always the other party's fault, not ours. I wonder if some day, given the survival of our species, we may find that the same primitive subcortical structures are involved in a schoolyard fight and a global war.Homo "sapiens", my foot.

DIRTY WAR Aspect ratio: 1.78:1Sound format: StereoEmergency services struggle to cope when Islamic terrorists detonate a so-called 'dirty bomb' in the middle of London.Daniel Percival's frightening movie uses all available evidence to dramatize the possible effects of a radioactive explosion in the heart of the UK capital, using the kind of documentary-style realism which has distinguished this particular subgenre since the 1960's. In essence, the film reveals a catalogue of flaws in the British government's current strategy for dealing with such terrorist outrages, and Percival's carefully-honed script (co-written by Lizzie Mickery) vents its spleen against mealy-mouthed politicians who would rather maintain the economic status quo than tackle this issue head-on. The film covers all necessary bases, and makes the salient point that this kind of terrorism is practised by a tiny handful of fanatics who have tarnished the Islamic faith with their reckless disregard for human life, though viewers won't be reassured by the subsequent scenes of devastation and horror. Not merely a drama, the film acts as a warning against complacency. Either that, or its just another post-9/11 scaremongering tactic. YOU be the judge...

The BBC and HBO teamed up to create "Dirty War", a 90 minute TV movie about a terrorist "dirty bomb" attack in London. The film gets down to business quickly as it packs both the terrorist and the government anti-terrorist efforts into the film leaving little room for human interest subplots. On the terrorist side we follow the bomb from the smuggling of radioactive materials to assembly to deployment to detonation. On the government side we see PR and training exercises, intelligence gathering and analysis, interdiction, post-detonation response, and follow up. The film also imparts a sense of how Al-Qa'ida type terrorist cells are organized, the radical Islamic terrorist mentality, and terrorist strategies. A sort of anatomy of a "dirty bomb" incident, "Dirty War" will answer many questions lurking in the minds of a public becoming ever more aware of this insidious threat. (B)

London is no different from any other major Western city – it is a target for terrorism. As such the Government makes noise about the risk and being alert, sending out booklets for the public to feel secure but also on edge, while the security forces within the UK prepare the best they can. A biological attack response drill highlights the weaknesses of the possible response. While the anti-terrorism unit of Scotland Yard continue to try and get inside-information, politicians debate the risks in stuffy boardrooms, while also keeping the realities of the situation from the public. While the security forces follow a lead from a notebook found on a raid, a small group of Islamic fundamentalists smuggle radioactive material into the UK and begin planning for a major terrorist strike using low-grade nuclear material in a primitive 'dirty' bomb.You can argue about whether this film is a jump to seize on fears over terrorism to get ratings; or that it is only going to worry people; or that it helps the terrorists by giving them insider information on possible responses but what this film should do is inform about the realities of the possible situation. Percival previously made Smallpox 2002; another timely film about the outcome of a biological attack. It was an effective film whose only real weakness is that the 'video diary' approach made it feel a little bit like amateur hour with the cast not really being as convincing as they should have been. Here the film takes the style of more of a drama than anything else so we start with the bomb attack being set up and we go from there. Although the film is written to make a point, it is also a good drama and at times it felt I was watching series 2 of 24 at some points. The film doesn't seem to contain anything that would tell terrorists a great deal about what is going on – or at least no more than any Hollywood film would; the makers may have had advice from the Government on the film but I thought it was public knowledge about listening to chatter, raids, links with other bodies etc?The film is useful in a way because it made me think about the risks and what would actually happen if the worst did happen. Like one of the characters said 'we knew what the IRA was doing 90% of the time but they still got through – with these guys we know very little', so the risk is there even if some would have you believe it is spin. However the film is not blind to the problems of planning and there are many scenes near the start that present this. Police say not enough is done but politicians point out that giving everyone a gasmask on the tube would cause panic; politicians talk up the training of the emergency services, but the actual officers try to work out what a drill with 60 'casualties' has to do with the real situation of a city of millions in turmoil. There are no easy answers but the film provided me a lot more information and food for thought than the Government's recent booklet. In case you haven't seen it, the booklet lists what the populace should do in the event of an emergency; in most cases the idea is to stock up on tinned, processed foods and stay indoors watching TV for announcements – watching TV and eating junk food? The Government does not need to tell the majority of us to do that, we're already there!The cast are much better than the Smallpox film and the decision to play it as a drama means that it has a better impact as a drama and not just as an issue film of its time. The fact that it 'could' happen obviously makes it pretty exciting but the drama is good enough on its own to be exciting and rather unnerving. Whether or not it helped me I can't say but I did enjoy the film (if enjoy is the right word) and felt it was very professionally made. It came across as a balanced presentation of reality and was aware of the good work done/being done but also the limitations of any planning or possible response actions. However this it is not so balanced as to not pour out criticism where it is deserved and a scene where a politician condemns the terrorists and praises the resilience of Londoners while the world falls to pieces behind her is particularly effective. One thing it didn't do as well as I would have liked was to actually resolve the situation – it ends suddenly and doesn't link to the scenes of chaos that had gone just minutes before it – but this is a minor complaint and I suppose it couldn't keep upping the ante without drawing it to a close at some point.A wider downside to the film is that, because it's topical, the BBC had to follow it with a live studio debate featuring 'experts' and an audience who have just seen the film and are still knee-jerking over it. Angry Muslims raged about how they were all painted as terrorists (even though the film had gone to silly lengths to do just the opposite); mothers wept about how they would get their kids from school (even though the film made it clear you stay where you are); angry right-wingers (not Giggs) confirmed that it is all happening because too many of 'them' are getting in. Meanwhile any voice of balance or reason from the panel was lost as they all tried to push their own agenda – the guy from the Muslim Council of Britain being the worst, just pushing his own line no matter what he was asked.Overall this is a very good drama special that manages to come across as very realistic. As a piece of fiction or as non-fiction, it is engaging and very interesting – painting a balanced view of the planning limitations prior to an attack in an entertaining but interesting fashion. However, as a view of a possible response, it is chilling at times and does well to show London covered in a nuclear cloud – with the British love of orderly queuing very quick to vanish in the face of a crisis. A timely, entertaining, chilling and worthwhile drama – at some points it is a documentary while at others it comes across as 24; in both ways it works, producing a film well worth seeking out.