At the height of the Cold War, one night in 1983, Stanislav Petrov’s level head and quick thinking prevented a potential nuclear disaster and certain escalation of US-Soviet tensions. This story of how Petrov “saved the world” will be unfamiliar to most but is a terrifying reminder of how close the world came to nuclear war during that period. The documentary’s title and subject matter make it sound like a gripping action film (Kevin Costner, Matt Damon, and Robert De Niro even make an appearance), but the reality of this rather unceremonious saving of the world couldn’t be any less Hollywood, and first-time Danish director Peter Anthony’s attempts to jazz up this story feel unnecessary and jarring.
The story goes that Petrov, commander of a Soviet nuclear early warning centre, survived an onslaught of alarms and red lights, judging the cacophony of sound to be a false alarm. Radars were claiming that America had launched five nuclear missiles at Russian soil, guessing correctly that the reports were false Petrov’s course of action was to remain passive, not wishing to be the one responsible for starting nuclear war. The film consists of dramatically reconstructed scenes from the fateful night and its aftermath, mixed with present-day footage of Petrov that feels oddly fabricated.
We follow Petrov as he travels to New York with a young Russian translator to speak at the UN. Petrov perfectly plays up to the crotchety, alcoholic, ex-Soviet stereotype and often seems impossible to engage with, and as the reconstructed sides of his story unfold it becomes easier to understand his present-day character. The oddball pair of Petrov and his young translator then embark on an Alexander Payne-esque road trip through America, peaking in weirdness when they meet Kevin Costner on a film set (Petrov is a huge fan).
It is a film of many faces and Director Peter Anthony has spoken of blurring the lines between documentary and drama, however they haven’t really been blurred, rather Anthony has taken a fat black marker and drawn lines between two very contrasting aspects. The reconstructed scenes feel cheap, melodramatic, and more than a little silly. As a film in its own right, the dramatic retelling of this story could be suspenseful and exciting, as one half of a documentary here it falls flat. Similarly, the modern day footage would have worked better as a standalone film, perhaps with minimal reconstruction to simply flesh out the back story.
Peter Anthony should be applauded for trying something interesting with his first feature, there are aspects here that do work, but the film’s two halves simply don’t gel together and the modern day footage feels too fake to be truly captivating. The Man Who Saved the World is a chilling story that deserves to be told, this, however, just isn’t the film to tell it.
