"We have invaded Silo 3. We are prepared to launch nine nuclear missiles. We demand ten million dollars, Air Force One... and you, Mr President." In Robert Aldrich's fervid attack on the evils of the US government, Burt Lancaster plays General Dell, a former war hero who was illegally jailed for murder because he wants to spill the beans about the real reasons for the Vietnam War. He escapes from prison and stages a daring raid on a missile silo; once inside, he threatens to launch nine ICBMs loaded with nuclear warheads at the Soviet Union, sparking World War Three, unless the president (Charles Durning) admits on national television that the war was an evil enterprise intended only to scare the Soviet Union, even at the cost of tens of thousands of American lives.

Dell is accompanied by Willis Powell (Paul Winfield), in many ways a voice of reason, and Augie Garvas (Burt Young), two convicts who are along for the ride because of the $10 million and free passage out of the country that Dell demands from the government. The sequence where Dell's men break into the military base is tense and exciting, and it features some of the split-screen camerawork that Aldrich uses to good effect throughout the film. It might not be very realistic—this film isn't very high on realism—but it's exciting. Throughout the film, too, are small, quiet touches of humor, such as when Dell indignantly informs Powell that "there are no midgets in the United States Air Force." Aldrich, who directed such nail-biters as Kiss Me Deadly and The Dirty Dozen, is an expert at pacing that ratchets up the suspense. The film's dramatic, but not really surprising, ending is a masterpiece of deliberate pacing.

Attempting to thwart Dell's plans is General MacKenzie (Richard Widmark), a longtime nemesis of the rogue general. His job is to be the bad guy: as we grow to like, or at least respect Dell, MacKenzie attempts to take him out. He's in charge of carrying out the government's "Solid Gold" attack, a small-scale nuclear device that will destroy the silo and half of Montana, but hey, at least the truth won't get out. A banquet of great supporting actors fills out President Stevens's cabinet, including Joseph Cotten, Melvyn Douglas, and Leif Erickson. The best supporting job is by Paul Winfield, who attempts to break through Dell's naïve beliefs that President Stevens is going to save the day.

You might notice that Dell's demands are a bit outdated, since the Pentagon Papers, released by Daniel Ellsberg in 1971, already told the world exactly what Dell wants the president to reveal. In addition, Henry Kissinger's 1957 book Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy says pretty much what the top-secret document says. It wasn't much of a surprise, and it certainly didn't prompt the kind of widespread, government-destroying outrage that the film predicts. American people are pretty willing to ignore or forgive any number of dastardly deeds committed by their government. I think Aldrich had too much faith in the body politic.

The film shares Dell's naivité about the president. Dell sincerely believes that the president is a good man who has either been led astray or never knew what was going on in the first place. It's devastating for him to think that the leader of the free world, elected by the people of the United States, could be a dishonest man (coming in the wake of Nixon, this is somewhat far-fetched). The film presents President Stevens as pretty much the guy Dell thinks he is. Stevens is a politician, willing to bend to political winds and make deals that offend one's sense of honor and decency, but in the end he's a good man who honestly didn't know about previous administrations' policies. This is impossible for me to believe; perhaps I'm too cynical. Presenting a president who's out of the loop lets the system off, just like saying that a president is stupid or senile is letting him off.

The film was a huge flop, and it basically destroyed Aldrich's career. It was one of the first films to attack US policy in Vietnam (a word that, strangely enough, isn't mentioned until nearly two hours into the film; before that, it's just "the war"), so maybe American audiences weren't ready to hear criticism of the government coming from Hollywood. The critic Tony Williams suggests that the film is Aldrich's "final cinematic testament to a culture that simply did not want to listen." It's a little too shrill by half, and it's around 45 minutes too long. Despite that, it's well worth watching, and it has been unjustly dismissed as a bad film.