Deterrence

It's the year 2008 -- an election year -- and Saddam Hussein is a global nuisance no more. The bad news is that his son now runs the show and has an even bigger hard-on for Kuwaiti and Saudi oil. President Emerson (Kevin Pollak), the first non-elected official to reach the Oval Office (following a death and a scandal), is hunkered down in a Colorado diner during the mother of all snowstorms when Saddam's offspring invades Kuwait. Iraq now has the bomb, and as with the Cuban Missile Crisis, things quickly escalate into a nuclear pissing match. Worse, the Iraqis won't negotiate with Emerson because he's a Jew.

For a low-budget thriller, Deterrence does a decent job of maintaining its credibility, though there is something horribly wrong -- if just physically -- in the spectacle of Pollak as the American president. At least Timothy Hutton and Sheryl Lee Ralph are perfect as the presidential political advisers who crack the diner into a hi-tech command post. What lifts Deterrence is the smartly engineered yet preposterous final solution -- an unlikely fusion of John Kennedy and Isaac Asimov. At the Kendall Square and in the suburbs.

-- Tom Meek