A Hollywood treatment of real-life events, “The Brink of War” gets off to an inauspicious start. The Cold War was “at its most critical point” in October 1986, reads the opening prologue card—yet one could assert that about basically any month from 1945–1991. President Ronald Reagan had announced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) in March 1983. Yet, Soviet objections to it surely fell short of the broadside: “The Soviet military pledges to attack before the shield can be developed.” Indeed, President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev had agreed in Geneva in November 1985: “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”