People are voting emotionally.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Blistering performances.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

For most other viewers, this film may be a dramatisation of a possible event, one which thankfully has not happened. For me, it is the stuff of legends! One of the interviewees is my father, several of the others were family friends I grew up with who were members of the Gravesend Theatre Guild.The majority of this film hit the floor thanks to the scissors of the censor, it was originally planned as a two hour long film, but at the time many scenes were seen as too horrifying. Scenes showing people hanging themselves rather than carrying on (the shot having been set up with a stuntman fixed to the lamppost and the director called "Lunch") have all been described to me over the past forty-five years. I would love to see the full director's cut.If you are looking for what would happen today in a nuclear war, don't watch this. If you are looking for what would have happened in the 60's if the "Reds" had pushed the button, watch this film. Watch this film and thank whichever deity you pray to that it didn't happen.

Most of the reviews I've seen on this site seem to base their rating of the film on their rating of the film's message. People are horrified by the portrayal of a nuclear war unfolding in England and want to heed the message, in which case they give it 9 or 10 stars, or people dismiss it as propaganda that ignores political complexities and they give it a low score. I believe the message, but I still have mixed feelings about the movie.The film is essentially a docu-drama that lays out how a nuclear war could effect England. It starts quite slowly, with shots of what would happen if the government decided to do mass evacuations in anticipation of a war. The flat narration and fondness for facts gives it a bit of the feel of one of those informational documentaries they showed in school when I was a kid.The movie picks up speed when the bombs drop. We see the initial blast, with people's eyes melted (not being a big special effects movie, we are told the eyes are melted but just see people screaming while covering their eyes). We see what happens to a house 40 miles from the blast. We see a fire storm kill off civilians and firemen. It's pretty grim, and the movie will often point out that what happens in their scenario echoes what has happened in places like Dresden and Hiroshima.This movie was clearly made with the goal of convincing the world that we should get rid of all nuclear weapons. It suggests that the government's preparations for nuclear war and woefully inadequate and that most people have no idea what would happen during such a war. There are also a mix of quotes from those in favor of nuclear weapons, who are made to look foolish, and those against.This is quite effective. But it was probably more effective in the 1960s when this information was less well known. Unless you keep your head in the sand, you should know about the blinding flash, the terrible winds, the deadly radiation, the death on a massive scale.While I appreciate the filmmaker's attempt to warn an oblivious England about the potential for a war that would end life as they knew it, they dry, documentary approach and the blunt polemics make this more effective as a piece of propaganda than as a piece of film making. I don't use propaganda in a pejorative sense, since I approve of the thrust of the film, but the movie is designed as a piece of propaganda, and as effective as the horrific scenes are, the film is still rather stiff and dry.

The War Game, although it follows a hypothetical scenario, is one of the best documentary films ever made. Based on British government documents detailing the probable aftermath of a nuclear war, it is one of the most chilling indictments of nuclear warfare ever made.Unlike later films such as The Day After and Threads, the film does not rely on special effects to get its point across. Made on a minimal budget, it features little to no explosions or spectacle. Rather, we are given the stark vision of human suffering after a thermonuclear exchange.Although the film goes into disturbing detail about the physical toll of nuclear war, the most unnerving parts revolve around the psychological toll, particularly the breakdown of authority and the emergence of mass post-traumatic shock syndrome.Although the film has a definite stance, it benefits from a largely clinical delivery, with most of the polemic elements being used as bumpers between segments. Although the Cold War is over, this film will remain a classic both as a historical document and a warning to future generations.

I downloaded all 48 minutes of this film from the internet, having been aware of it for years but never having seen it. It hasn't dated, despite being made in grainy black and white over 40 years ago. In some respects, it's even more shocking than Threads (another excellent film on the same subject). The effects were surprisingly good (people being sucked into buildings by the fire storm for example). What was especially poignant for me were the effects of the war on children, being a father.It's a shame that this isn't better known, when many mediocre big budget films are lauded in the 'top 100 film' lists we see so often on UK TV.