Jeff Daniels and Jared Harris Face Off as Reagan and Gorbachev in The Brink of War, a Talky But Earnest Cold War Drama

The Brink of War is now playing in theaters. Writer-director Michael Russell Gunn’s well-meaning feature film debut, The Brink of War, takes a wordy, academic approach to chronicling the two momentous days in October 1986 when US President Ronald Reagan (Jeff Daniels) and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev (Jared Harris) sat across a table in a house in Reykjavik, Iceland hoping to strike a landmark nuclear disarmament deal designed to keep the Cold War from finally turning into a hot one. (Impressively, the film was shot at the actual location and in the same rooms where the leaders spoke.) As thoughtful and earnest as the drama is, it’s also pretty chill for a movie about trying to prevent nuclear war. The events may take place at the peak of the Cold War, and the movie reiterates that this meeting is the last chance for such a deal to happen, but The Brink of War lacks the urgency that any film about, say, the Cuban Missile Crisis (e.g., Thirteen Days) possesses, where the viewer truly feels the global stakes and intense pressure the President is under. The Brink of War is very stagebound, often feeling like a play adapted for the screen, but it is just as reminiscent of those soli