I first saw the trailer for The Brink of War several weeks ago, when my family and I went to see Young Washington. My gut reaction was that the movie looked good. My second reaction was dread, because Jeff Daniels plays Ronald Reagan in it.
“President Reagan races against time to salvage a deal with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that could dismantle nuclear arsenals—or ignite disaster,” reads the movie description. “With pressure mounting from advisors, intelligence agencies, and history itself, every word spoken brings the world closer to peace… or destruction.”
Daniels is a known Hollywood leftist who has never been shy about his politics. So the question hanging over the whole trailer for me wasn't Is this a good movie? It was, Is this going to be a two-hour hit job dressed up as history? Could an actor like Daniels actually play Reagan without malice? I wasn't convinced he could.
Since the film comes from Angel Studios, I was willing to give it a shot anyway. As luck would have it, Angel Studios allowed me to preview the film last month.
Daniels' performance turned out to be better than I expected.
At times he genuinely captures Reagan's look. He never really tries to imitate the man, though. Dennis Quaid's Reagan in the 2024 biopic Reagan nailed the look, the persona, and the cadence with an accuracy that bordered on eerie. Daniels did not chase that same impression.
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So would this film be fair to Reagan? Would it hold up next to Quaid's version? Those were the two questions I carried into the screening, and the movie mostly answers both of them well.
The Brink of War is set during the 1986 Reykjavík Summit, where President Ronald Reagan raced against the clock to strike a deal with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to dismantle both nations' nuclear arsenals or blow the whole relationship apart. If there’s anything you’ll notice watching the film, it’s that every line of dialogue in that room carries weight, because the film never lets you forget that the two men are negotiating the fate of the planet in real time.
Writer-director Michael Russell Gunn dug into declassified transcripts from the actual summit to build the script, and it shows. In fact, most of the film unfolds inside the same room where Reagan and Gorbachev negotiated, and the production went so far as to film at Höfði, the real site of the summit in Iceland, paying $6.3 million in rent to the city of Reykjavík. That's a serious financial swing for authenticity, and it pays off. The building itself feels like a main character of the film.
Gunn also weaves in a couple of smaller threads, including Nancy Reagan's absence from the summit and the friction between the American and Soviet delegations. Those subplots could have padded out the runtime for no reason. Instead, they give the negotiation scenes room to breathe between the tensest exchanges, and the pacing never drags because of it. The lighting and camera work do a lot of the heavy lifting here, too, establishing the distance or closeness to a deal throughout the negotiations.
If there's a performance that carries the film, it's not Daniels. It's J.K. Simmons as Secretary of State George Shultz. Simmons brings a gravity to every scene he's in. I would have loved to have seen him used more to narrate the progress of the negotiations for extra context.
That said, I highly recommend this movie. Whether you lived through it, love history, are a Reagan buff, or just appreciate a quality high-stakes film, you’ll enjoy it. For sure, history buffs are going to eat this one up. The negotiation itself is genuinely fascinating, and Gunn trusts the material enough to let the tension come from the actual stakes instead of manufactured melodrama. Daniels gives Reagan a fair shake here. My one complaint is that he didn't do more to capture Reagan's distinctive vocal style, which is where his performance really falls short of Quaid's.
Still, this is a fascinating historical film and one worth seeing. Angel Studios has a biopic coming later this year on the life of Milton S. Hershey, called Hershey, and from what I've seen, it looks excellent. My family happened to take a trip to Hershey, Pa., this past weekend, and after learning more about his story firsthand, I'm looking forward to seeing how Angel handles it.
The Brink of War releases on Friday, Aug. 14.
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