Maybe the most cynical 70s disaster movie I've seen; actually, it's almost more of a conspiracy thriller than a disaster movie. Here, the greed doesn't lead to a careless accident. Greed leads to a knowing disaster that will claim thousands of lives just to boost profits.

It also contains maybe the most 70s theme song ever (amazingly, not the Original Song nominee from the film): www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I-Hs6Pzsy4

A perfectly fine, and well-acted, version of the Pinter play that doesn't quite justify its existence.

It amazes me that this came out in 1962, the same year as John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, because they are woven from the same cloth. They are about taking a nation's legacy of masculinity and beginning to unravel it -- asking us what it really takes to be noble and how that nobility may be based on nothing but lies. I don't know enough about the samurai genre to know how much of a bold deconstruction this is, but every frame feels like something new and fresh.