Despite the constant stress by The General on the fate of the world depending on a desperate race against the clock, director Barry Mahon never manages to instill any sense of urgency into 'Rocket Attack U.S.A.', since the need to pad out to feature length a script already over-burdened with long dialogue scenes set in offices means that nothing is ever done quickly and the action is padded out with digressions like an interminable belly dance in a Moscow nightclub. SPOILER COMING: Then suddenly two of the main characters are abruptly killed off, and as in 'Dr. Strangelove' and 'Fail-Safe' the worst happens.
The stock footage that makes up much of the film is interesting to watch, and it manages to anticipate the Cuban missile crisis by four years (it carries a 1958 copyright date), as well as the leadership coups staged by hard-liners in the Kremlin that unseated Khrushchev (who is never mentioned in the film by name) in 1964 and Gorbachev in 1991, but is unfortunately so dull that you're unlikely to still be paying attention when after dragging its heels for the previous sixty minutes it all abruptly ends with a bang.
The stock footage that makes up much of the film is interesting to watch, and it manages to anticipate the Cuban missile crisis by four years (it carries a 1958 copyright date), as well as the leadership coups staged by hard-liners in the Kremlin that unseated Khrushchev (who is never mentioned in the film by name) in 1964 and Gorbachev in 1991, but is unfortunately so dull that you're unlikely to still be paying attention when after dragging its heels for the previous sixty minutes it all abruptly ends with a bang.