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This is the best depiction of the tragic sinking of the unsinkable Titanic I've yet seen. Kudos to the uncredited (on IMDb) director, cast and crew of this remarkable re-creation. The documentary style of the film makes one feel we're seeing the actual facts of this much-dramatized event. It far surpasses the three fictional depictions I've seen: "A Night to Remember," the Academy Award-winning film of "Titanic" and the abysmal Tony Award-winning musical "Titanic." The mixture of what I assume are cold hard facts with dramatic recreation is unparalleled. And I say this as one who has read extensively on the subject, and who enjoyed enormously the New York City exhibition a few years ago on 43rd Street, where one received a passport of a passenger, saw actual items recovered from the sunken ship, witnessed full-scale recreations of elements on the ship such as state rooms and the grand staircase, and discovered upon exit how your assumed identity had fared. Some of us died, a few survived. And we were given details of our surrogate passengers' previous lives and future plans. But this television production surpassed everything I've seen or read. I hope a DVD of this production will be made available. I will watch it again, and share it with anyone who shares my own curiosity about this dreadful event, made even more vivid by the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

Granted that I haven't seen a lot of the teen-age horror movies that this film is undoubtedly part of, but if there are worse films than this out there, I don't want to see them. I went to see it because the title intrigues. If there had been a countdown (witnessing the extinction of numbers 1,2,3) so we might slowly learn the nature of the danger, it would have been conceivably interesting. Unfortunately, we begin right with the title character, a plastic handsome blond Hollywood type who has no charisma and less talent. I laughed aloud more than a few times, and as far as I could discern, no humor was intentional. The only saving grace (if there was one) was Dianna Agron, who made an appealing ingénue -- very pretty, not exceptionally vapid (like the rest of the film) and conceivably talented. This is the kind of movie an actor would leave OFF his resume -- no one would want to admit to being in it. Of course, choices are made by agents, not actors, and to some idiots this appeared to be worth urging their clients to accept roles. I've probably seen worse movies, but as might be understood, I can't remember the titles. If there was an explanation of why the aliens wanted to eliminate the aliens who were already on earth, I didn't get it. But I wasn't paying attention much of the time, once I saw the torture I was in for.

I saw The Young Lions when I was 18 years old, the year it came out. I went into the theater a college kid from Texas who totally bought the swagger of American war heroes. I came out of the film absolutely devastated -- and decided I was now a pacifist and would dedicate my life as an artist to living up to the high standards of this film.

All the acting is extraordinary -- Cliff is at his very best, Dean Martin is a surprising revelation playing a dissolute Broadway star he was perfect for. Maximilian Schell is amazing -- I don't know how he wasn't given an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Barbara Rush, Hope Lange and May Britt are all indelible portraits of the three faces of 40's women.

The cinematography is black and white at its best, sharp elements of chiaroscuro unmatched by color films. The musical score is on a level with Holst's The Planets, unrelenting and devastating.

But the outstanding feature of the film is the incandescent performance by Marlon Brando at the peak of power as an actor. I don't think I had ever tried to imagine how the Third Reich came to be and how it might have affected a normal German citizen until Brando's brilliant work illuminated it for me. He is at his most handsome, obviously in great shape inside that tailored uniform, and truly epitomizes the "Golden God of War" who is enlightened by the horror he is expected to deliver, and is transformed into a tragic figure.

This is as good as Saving Private Ryan or Schindler's List -- one of the most neglected masterpieces of American cinema: a Greek tragedy of our own era.