After years of meticulous planning, a terrorist operation is reaching its final stages. The authorities have received no intelligence; they are in a race against time but don't yet know it. As the operation unfolds, we see the working lives of men and women directly affected by terrorism. Among them: a firemen worried about the increasingly dangerous conditions he and his men are expected to work under; the head of the anti-terrorist branch whose responsibility it is to protect London and a female Muslim detective brought into Scotland Yard to investigate another suspected terrorist cell. But it is too late to stop the attack.
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I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.
Good story, Not enough for a whole film
As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.
The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.
Dirty War is absolutely one of the best political, government, and well written T.V. Drama's in the 25 years.The acting is superb, the writing is spectacular.Diry War reveals the true side of why we are not ready to respond to a Nuclear, Biological, and Radiological Terrorist Attack here on American soil.Dirty War should be made into a major motion picture - It's that good! I highly recommend this great drama to everyone who desire to know the truth.This T.V. drama reveals how British Intelligence (MI5 & MI6) attempt to expose a terrorist plot and conspiracy to destroy innocent victims -because of England's involvement in the Iraq War.The scenes of different parts of London, England are also spectacular.Dirty War is a must see!!!
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.
I really liked this movie. I watched it last night on the Public Broadcasting System. The part I liked about it was the fact that they dealt with issues of today not in the future or the past. They basically had some terrorists take a van or two and rent them out to be car bombs. I think what the movie could have showed was people in different countries at the same time. It did show the fact that England, or any other country, isn't prepared for an attack on the magnitude that they showed. I have never heard of any of the actors or actresses in the movie so I can't really say if they are normally their parts. After the movie, they had this panel of experts talking about if something like that could happen here in the U.S. It was a thought-provoking discussion!
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...