The movie begins with a stark image: Ronald Reagan (Jeff Daniels), shot from behind, in a light overcoat, looking out at the roiling Atlantic Ocean. He turns and goes back toward the house where, for a day and a half, he has negotiated with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev (Jared Harris) about arms control, or arms reduction — the terms have been fluid throughout their talks. Eventually they will prove almost meaningless.
“The Brink of War,” written and directed by Michael Russell Gunn and produced by Angel Studios, chronicles the Reykjavík summit of 1986, which ended in frustration for both leaders.
What pleasure and intrigue the movie has is provided by its top-billed cast. As Reagan, Daniels builds a characterization from traits — resolutely-set jaw, occasionally twinkly eyes — buttressing Gunn’s hagiographic vision of the former president. Harris plays Gorbachev as occasionally blindsided by Reagan’s plainspokenness. The movie invents the fiction that Gorbachev spoke perfect English, and depicts the two speaking man-to-man; in fact Gorbachev and Reagan relied on a translator. J.K. Simmons portrays the Secretary of State George Shultz as a quiet chess master. Nancy Reagan (Hope Davis), chooses to stay in Washington while a dressed for success Raisa Gorbachev (the Serbian actress Branka Katic) does Soviet public relations in Iceland.
The supporting players don’t fare particularly well. As Western reporters, Aya Cash and Guy Burnet are reduced to exposition machines, and the scenes in which C.I.A. and K.G.B. employees snipe at each other in the basement of the negotiation site are cartoonish. After a K.G.B. guy quotes the theorist Karl Marx, his C.I.A. counterpart shoots back, “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, you ever hear that one?” “Yes, written by a slave owner,” the K.G.B. man retorts. Was real-life diplomacy ever so on the nose?
The Brink of War Rated PG. Running time: 1 hour 57 minutes. In theaters.
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