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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
Ignore the crass title, this is an awesome film-documentary, 1 May 2003
By A Customer
When I first saw this movie in the shop, I expected a cheesy, gung-ho Cold War propaganda flick. Not so...
Having seem it, I still get goosebumps thinking about it; it is both visually and audibly stunning. With original archive footage and a truly amazing soundtrack by William Stromberg, this film-documentary charts the development of the world's most horrifying weapons.
From the first tests in the American desert using 1000tons of TNT on stilts to the Soviets' monster bomb, "Tsar Bomba" (weighing in with a 67 Megaton blast), the timeline is followed with almost no sign of any political or militaristic spin. Producer/Director Peter Kuran has missed nothing - even including a scene that will leave you incredulous - an atomic cannon shell that causes a small radioactive fireball to whistle up the road less than 200 metres from onlooking camera crews!
The highly popular soundtrack was specially commissioned for the film. Stromberg's crescendos and choral pieces meet the viewer's mood perfectly with each scene; combined with a flawless performance by the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, "Trinity and Beyond" will go straight onto many people's "Must Buy" lists. (Some people may recognise the "Hiroshima-Nagasaki Requiem from "X-Men2")
When watching this film, emotions can range from mere interest to utter incredulity to an out-and-out sense of horror. I would suggest that, whether you are pro-bomb or anti-bomb,you MUST watch this film.
The sheer power of these devices is beyond words; watch it - it will leave you speechless.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
FORGEET THREADS!!, 31 Aug 2004
This is the scientific version of "Threads" and has much more drama.
William Shatner's low and 'Star Trek' warm monotone narration combined with earth shattering images provide this movie with entertainment that you just want to watch over and over again.
The 3D section is excellent, especially if your watching it in Dolby pro-logic and on DVD. The most interesting moment for me personally is where the news reporters are at the test site and you can see every emotionin their faces just before the bomb goes off. The device detonates and we are shown the images of a house imploding and cars and buses being hurtled into the air and disintegrating upon impact with the heat blast. Pure quality.
Put it this way, choice between "Treads" and "Trinity"?
Trinity will always come first because what's portrayed is fact, not fiction.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
visually impressive., 16 Mar 2006
By A Customer
The lack of any real discussion about the nuclear physics involved is a little disappointing. The footage is excellent, although be aware that some extensive modification has been done, e.g. morphing several rapatronic stills together to depict the early microseconds of the fission explosion in motion. The best bit is the Wilson cloudchamber effect from shot Crossroad-Baker - this has to be seen to be believed...
Although minimal time is spent on USSR's Tsar Bomba (50Mt), there is plenty of other high yield US thermonuclear test footage, although in some respects this is not as visually stunning as the lower yield fission bombs, due to the (not so...) safe distance being so great with the likes of tests Castle and Ivy.I like the fact the narrative is morally neutral. It is obvious
from the footage how destructive nuclear weapons are. An extra star for having William Shatner narrate too...
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
A truly explosive film-documentary, 3 Oct 2005
By A Customer
Fact is certainly stranger than fiction. The Manhattan Project is one of mankind's greatest endeavours/achievements and spurred the development of rocketry (to deliver the resultant payload across continents - ICBMs) and Game Theory to handle the strategic implications of this. This film has some incredible archival footage, some recently declassified, and an excellent narrative/soundtrack. Dr Teller, or should that be "Dr. Strangelove" ;-), "father of the hydrogen bomb" himself, also makes an appearance. The U.S. conducted some 216 atmospheric and underwater nuclear tests between July 1945 and November 1962 and, following the LTBT, a further 723 underground until 1992. The film has incredible footage of some of the most important of these, notably: Operation CROSSROADS "Baker" (the first underwater test, which threw 2,000,000 gallons of water a mile high in a column 2000' wide, decimating the ghost fleet below when it came back down), Operation CASTLE "Bravo", the largest ever U.S. Test (yielding 15 megatons), Operation REDWING "Cherokee", the first U.S. airdrop of a thermonuclear weapon and Operation WIGWAM, which tested the vulnerability of submarines to deeply-detonated nuclear weapons. This is a "must see" film and I would recommend Richard Rhode's Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" and its sequel "Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb", together with Michael Light's "100 Suns" as further reading. There are some great archival sites on the web also.
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1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
A good documentary ruined by background music and poor editing, 25 Feb 2007
We are not allowed to appreciate the full awesome power of these bombs due to relentlessly irritating orchestral music which, for me, ruined this DVD.
Also it is clear to me the editor was bored with analysing the explosions as they were either speeded up, cut too soon, cuts out of order(!) or too much focus placed on the countdowns. How very tedious.
A real shame, but unfortunately I don't know of a proper documentary (not a silly 'docu-film') that properly shows and details nuclear weapon history.
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