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The Day After

Director: Nicholas Meyer. Cast: Jason Robards, JoBeth Williams, Georgan Johnson, Steve Guttenberg John Lithgow, Amy Madigan. Runtime:126 minutes. 1983.

First presented as a television movie, by ABC in November 1983, The Day After generated an intense national debate in the US about the dangers posed by nuclear build up during the 1980s. It imagines the break out of a full-scale war between the US led NATO and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. It focuses our attention on the life of ordinary citizens living in the town of Lawrence, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri, as well as several family farms situated near the American nuclear missile silos. The characters include: a dedicated doctor, Dr Russell Oakes, who is completely tied up with his tight hospital schedule; Denise Dahlberg eagerly preparing for her wedding to take place soon; Stephen Klein who is looking forward to his college graduation. Their peaceful daily lives are destroyed by the missile attack, the reasons for which are irrelevant to the story. The series of attacks vaporise whole towns, destroy almost all life around and leaves a few survivors to witness the utter waste and horror of the aftermath—the nuclear winter…

 

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Reviews by Dr Gigy Joseph