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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Surprisingly Suspenseful!, March 9, 2003
This 1977 made-for-TV suspenser will be quite a surprise for those expecting some mid-70s TV dreck. While the film does have the overall patina of a TV movie from the 70s, it dispenses with the "Early Aaron Spelling" style of tripe in favor of some real drama.After the Three Mile Island accident, the public took notice of nuclear power stations and their potential for disaster. The result (besides a chilling effect on the public in regards to welcoming nuclear power), was a sub-genre of the disaster movie. This sub-genre was more about preventing an accident in progress as opposed to cleaning up after the disaster has already occurred. "Red Alert" is typical of the kind of films in the nuclear power plant disaster movie sub-genre. In this film, a nuclear accident at the Colossus plant in rural Minnesota kills fourteen men, and causes a lockdown of the reactor room. The cooling systems are failing, and time is running out. The main computer in the command and control center of the power agency, Proteus, is convinced a major catastrophe has occurred, and the reactor crew is dead. Proteus blames human error for what went wrong, and based on the sensor data, keeps the plant in lockdown mode. The man in charge of the command center, Henry Stone, is a no-nonsense book man, who dispatches security expert and personal enemy Frank Brolen to get to the bottom of things. Brolen believes men might still be alive in the reactor room, while Stone refuses to acknowledge that Proteus could have made an error. The argument over Brolen wanting to save lives vs. Stone's faith in the rules, regulations, and technology escalates between the two men. Meanwhile, time is running out to solve the mystery and shut down the reactor before Minneapolis is destroyed. I have to say that the real highlight of the film is the performance of Ralph Waite as the straight-laced bureaucrat Henry Stone. A typical by-the-book man who will not deviate from the rules no matter the cost, the Stone character is stereotypical in all disaster movies. However, rather than simply do a walk-on and collect a check, Waite brings a dimension to Stone that another actor might not have bothered with. Fortunately, we have Waite in the role, and we are rewarded with an excellent performance that many other films (disaster or otherwise) clearly lack by comparison. Just as the book man is a stereotypical character, so is his nemesis; the think-on-your-feet rebel. Here, William Devane plays Stone's counterpart, Frank Brolen, and while he isn't as good as Waite, he does fill the role admirably. By nature and design, his character sinks a bit more into the callings of the stereotype action-rebel, but not to the point of becoming annoying. Also playing by the disaster movie numbers, the rebel Brolen has a friend and assistant, Carl Wyche, played suitably by Michael Brandon. Wyche is the family man who discovers in the course of events, that his wife and kids are in the disaster zone if the nuclear reactor is destroyed. Adrienne Barbeau plays Wyche's wife with honesty, and character actor M. Emmet Walsh (instantly recognizable thanks to his umpteen gazillion supporting roles over the years on TV and in film), plays a local sheriff who suspects something is wrong at the power plant. In fact, there really isn't a weak performance in the cast, except perhaps for the actor playing Stone's young assistant, a character who questions his chief's actions, but not very strongly. Actually, this seemed to fit anyway, as Stone is a very powerful character (as played by Waite), and the assistant a new man on the job. Credit must be given to director William Hale, who lifts the material far above the TV movie-of-the-week dreck that it could have become. The mystery surrounding the possible sabotage of the power plant, the battle of wills between straight-laced book man Stone and humanist action-rebel Brolen, Wyche's dangerous concern for his family, and the suspense when rebel Brolen faces off against the clock are all played out nicely with a skill rarely seen in TV movies today. Hale worked on several well-known series and projects, among them, "Kojak", "Barnaby Jones", "Cannon", "The Streets of San Francisco", "Night Gallery", and "The Paper Chase". He also directed "S.O.S. Titanic" and "The Murder of Mary Phagan", and was a second unit director on "The Greatest Story Ever Told". Cheers all around, especially to Ralph Waite, and also director Hale, for not being satisfied with making "Red Alert" just another TV movie, but for making it far better.
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