Towers places his vessel under the command of the Royal Australian Navy and is summoned to attend a briefing, partly regarding an automated digital broadcast coming from Alaska in the Northern Hemisphere. The submarine crew finds refuge in Melbourne, Australia which the radioactive fallout has not yet reached (though radio communications with several radio operators farther north than Australia indicate that radiation has reached their countries and will be in Australia in a few months). Both countries are destroyed, as is most of the world. USS Charleston (SSN-704) is equipped with a caterpillar drive and is on station following a nuclear exchange, under the command of Dwight Towers.Ī devastating nuclear war that contaminated the northern hemisphere was preceded by a standoff between the United States and China after the latter blockaded and later invaded Taiwan.

The film is a remake of a 1959 film, which was also based on the 1957 novel by Nevil Shute, but updates the setting of the story to the film's then-future of 2006, starting with placing the crew on a fictional Los Angeles-class submarine, USS Charleston (SSN-704). Unless you cannot bear to be confronted with your own mortality, this is a must-see.On the Beach is a 2000 apocalyptic drama television film directed by Russell Mulcahy and starring Armand Assante, Bryan Brown, and Rachel Ward. The director uses several filming techniques that are rarely used so that the viewer gets time to think about the situation and feel the dilemma of the character. The movie is played well, directed well and has great photography. You feel the difficulties in the way the characters choose to die. That might be true on the surface, but it is completely different when you keep in mind that they all are going to die. There are story lines that resemble soap opera's. Not much action, but for those who like to think while watching a movie, this film will stick to you. An American nuclear submarine that survived the war is boarded by an Aussie liaison officer and a cynical scientist, that used to date the sister-in-law of the officer, to search for possible survivors. There is a chance that some people close to the north pole survived. Within two months, no one human will be alive.

Australia gets spared initially, but its inhabitants face certain death as clouds of radio active fall-out nears.

The plot is simple: War has broke out (in this case between the US and China, but it could be Iraq or North-Korea too.) and the US strikes with nuclear weapons. Very confronting and on the eve of a war in Iraq, not at all unthinkable. What would I do when I was confronted with my certain death and the end of mankind? That question was getting more and more to me when I watched On The Beach.

Shute nevil on the beach