'Dirty War' deals with present dangers

It must be coincidental that Boston's recent dirty-bomb scare came days before the premiere of the HBO movie "Dirty War." We know television outlets will lie, cheat, steal, and pander shamelessly in order to grab viewers, falsifying coming attractions and encouraging reality hot-tub shows to look like soft-core porn. But even they wouldn't put a city on high alert to feed their Nielsen addiction. If anyone is trying to use terror scares as promotional tools, it's not HBO.

And really, the HBO people don't need to manufacture interest in their movie, which airs tonight at 9. They had us at "suicide bombers" and "radioactive material."

"Dirty War" (which will also run on PBS on Feb. 23 as part of an HBO-PBS deal) is a glimpse of what might happen if a homemade device packed with radioactive powder exploded in a major city -- in this case, London. It's not much of a drama in terms of character and plot; most of the major players in the story -- the police and fire officials and the Islamic terrorists -- aren't even referred to by name. You won't shed a tear over the fates of any of these nondescript individuals. But director Daniel Percival's movie does succeed in providing a generalized sense of the creeps -- first about just how unready the city is to cope with a dirty bomb detonation, and then about just how catastrophic such an event could be.

Employing -- OK, exploiting -- the horrors of the times to make scary movies isn't exactly new. Those who think scaremongering hit Hollywood only recently might recall nuclear disaster movies such as "Fail-Safe" in 1964, or any number of "Twilight Zone" episodes. Some 100 million viewers tuned in to a TV movie called "The Day After" back in 1983, as it imagined a nuclear strike to the United States. Like most spine chillers, it capitalized on our biggest vulnerabilities in order to work.

But now, with the Cold War over and Sept. 11 still vivid in our memories, nukes don't have quite the same fright potential as terrorism. We're more concerned with exactly what new level of attack might be slouching toward us. "Dirty War" falls into the same category as series such as "24" and "The Grid," as well as the recent FX movie "Smallpox," which was also directed by Percival. They all try to envision what most of us try not to think about -- the next disaster. They also rely heavily on the Islamic stereotypes that have flourished since Sept. 11, in an attempt to seem real. "Dirty War" tries to compensate by including a Muslim detective, but those tired of these familiar extremist depictions will surely have a problem with "Dirty War."

The movie has a long lead-up to the inevitable explosion, to highlight the inadequacies of the local infrastructure -- most obviously during a practice drill. For example, the protective orange suits aren't sufficient, seriously hindering and endangering the firemen who would arrive first at a bomb site. But the minister for London (played with deceptive sympathy by Helen Schlesinger) nonetheless pronounces the drill a success, to build public confidence. She's more concerned with the perception of safety than safety itself.

While the British bureaucracy stumbles on its own heels, we see members of terrorist cells contacting one another -- moving the contaminated material into the city, assembling the bombs, and finally setting them off. Their chains of command appear to work more efficiently than the government's. The irony, in this case, is lethal.

Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com.