ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Gurlyndrobb While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Bessie Smyth Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

bulk-15 An interesting insight into nuclear paranoia in the early 1980s, focused not on the Soviet cold war threat but on the possibility of home-grown American nuclear terrorism. This TV movie's fictional 'breaking news story' (War of the Worlds) format has been copied time and again on TV in the years since. The film hasn't aged well but viewers should remember that this production predated The Day After, Threads, and the special effects technology we take for granted today. It's also important to note that even when this was first aired, it was very bad TV. Kathryn Walker's performance as the overly emotional female news anchor was truly embarrassing, even in its day, and even the more skilled actors in the cast simply couldn't overcome the poor script and direction. As bad as TV was in the early 80s, it was rarely *this* bad. Which makes this movie all the more interesting to watch at three in the morning with your drunk on. It's an antidote for nostalgia and a counter-example not only to the many other movies that did a better job with this subject, but most the television content we take for granted today.

Charles Herold (cherold) This blew me away the first time I saw it in 1983, and if it effected me less this time, that's a mix of my knowing how it would unfold and the fact that news is different now and thus Special Bulletin often seems dated. The movie actually captures the TV news of the time pretty well. The female anchor is a little annoying, but then Zwick and Herskovitz have always had problems creating likable, realistic women. While done like a documentary, the drama unfolds with, well, more drama than one would expect in real life. The terrorists are well educated and sincere (in the 1970s terrorism often seemed to attract well-read, articulate nut-jobs, as opposed to today's illiterate whack jobs). Tensions rise rather more precipitously than is probably realistic, but it does make for a more interesting story.Special Bulletin gets better and better as it progresses, with a rising of tension and horror that is hard to bear by the last half hour. The documentary device is well done and, in spite of dated qualities, does give you a sense of watching unfolding events. Highly recommended.

violetaugustine I can remember watching the original broadcast of this movie when I was thirteen, while the word DRAMATIZATION flashed across the screen literally every three minutes (very annoying). I finally managed to track down a copy a few weeks ago, one mercifully free of all the disclaimers, and sat down expecting to enjoy a nostalgic, not very scary eighties kitsch-fest.Well, I'm shocked to say I was wrong--despite the dated clothing, hairstyles and screen graphics, Special Bulletin holds up amazingly well twenty-two years later. The suspenseful, quickly-moving plot and the acting, quite good for a TV movie, pull you right into the action (it helps that in this era of terrorism and dirty bomb fears, you can't dismiss the whole scenario as Cold War paranoia), and even though I remembered every twist and turn of the story, the ending and how it came about was still a punch in the gut. As other reviewers have noted, there's an element of dark, Network-like satire playing right alongside the nuclear-countdown tension (remember Jessica Savitch, anyone?--the actress playing the lead female newscaster has all her little expressions and vocal tics hilariously down pat), and not surprisingly the "official concern" expressed by the news team doesn't seem the least sincere until reality suddenly, horrifyingly smacks them in the face.Also not surprisingly, in light of recent news events in another picturesque Southern city, the federal government's first response to the terrorist crisis is, "That's Charleston's problem," and when they finally do get the picture they 1) baldly lie to the public about the danger they're in and 2) don't have the slightest idea what to do to stop it. (The scenes of the "official" evacuation becoming a parking lot, fistfights and food running out almost instantly at an evacuee shelter are so Katrina- and Rita-like that it's eerie.) And where's the president during all this? God only knows. Apparently, the creators of this movie were ahead of their time in more ways than one.In conclusion, if you can in fact find a copy (selling secondhand on Amazon for nearly a hundred dollars!), this movie is well worth your time. I still have a hard time believing that anybody was really fooled into thinking this was real--it's an impressive fake newsroom, but it's still obviously fake--but if you enjoy plot-driven suspense with a chilling apocalyptic twist, or just want to remember those thrilling days of Mutually Assured Destruction, you'll enjoy this. And then the producer and writer went on to create Thirtysomething, of all things, so go figure.

Mark Mears Though this originally aired (on NBC, if I remember correctly) in 1984, it was prescient in how it depicted news media coverage of a "breaking news" event.Complete with glitzy (for their time) graphics, concerned anchors, wall-to-wall coverage, talking heads, and gripping live reports, it does not seem dated (except for the hair styles!), even today.Though it depicts the coverage of a hostage crisis by a fourth broadcast network, this aired a year before the Fox network came into existence. The RBS network's graphics, promotional spots, and anchors are so realistic that the real network that aired the film really didn't have any choice but to continually remind viewers that what they were watching was fiction. And though we're all familiar today with the news networks' saturation coverage of live events, this originally aired only 4 years after the inception of CNN -- before that network was the major force that it is today.Depicting a gripping series of events, it's as much or more of a commentary on how the news media handles such situations than anything else. The way that the events are presented will seem eerily familiar to anyone in today's world, but remember that terrorism was not a big concern to many people 20 years ago.The acting and production values combine to make for one of the most powerful films ever produced for television. I highly recommend this film not only for its impact, but for its almost too accurate portrayal of events that are all too easy to imagine in today's world.