“By Dawn’s Early Light” was a made-for-HBO movie filmed and set just before the fall of the Soviet Union. In short, some PO’ed Soviet military jerks steal a Russian nuclear missile, sneak it into Turkey and launch it into Ukraine, sparking a limited nuclear war between Russia and NATO. Due to misunderstandings, mistakes, arrogance and bad leadership, a situation that’s already bad gets worse. While some of the effects are clearly dated, it remains an effectively creepy movie.
One scene that always freaks me right the hell out: the carrier (USS Midway) getting torpedoed and sinking. You don’t see it; it’s just radio messages. This shows an effective example of “less is more.” As there’s no chance that an HBO TV movie budget in 1990 would have been able to show the sinking of an aircraft carrier well, doing it off screen was the right choice.
Cities get nuked. Airplanes brought down. Presidents blinded. There is no happy ending. But at least James Earl Jones gets a real cigarette.