WarGames

John Badham, USA, 1983, 114 minutes

"Wouldn't you prefer a good game of chess?"

War! Huh! What is it good for!? Absolutely Nothing! Say it again...!

The Cold War brought us many great things- The Cuban missile crisis and exploding cigars, spies, double agents and the chance of destroying every living creature on the planet many times over. Fun eh?

Probably the only people who were sad to see it end (apart from the Republicans and the Politburo) was Hollywood. For 50 years a major genre was held up by the constant threat of the Damn Reds. And some of the movies that were made about it are really quite good...

WarGames tells the story of a highschool kid (Matthew Broderick) who mistakenly breaks into a top secret military computer looking for newly designed computer games and accidentally starts the countdown to World War III. Ooops. Don’t you just hate it when that happens?

Although bits may seem dated in this era where everyone has access to the interweb thingy at their fingertips, such as the computers with about the same power as your toaster, this movie is still a really effective, fun and suspenseful movie. It even has a take home message (destroying the earth is Bad. Deep, eh?). Bits can be a little far fetched (Ally Sheedy going out with a computer nerd?), but if you overlook these, then what you have is a damn enjoyable movie and as films about computers/hacking go, this still ranks among the best (Hackers, anyone?-this shits on it from a great height.). W.O.P.R, the computer, comes across like SKYNET’s less evil younger brother and Joshua does sum up the sentiment of the movie in his final line. Sent shivers down my spine, I can tell you.

Review by Karl "Carlito Baby" Byrne
Written for EUFS Programme Autumn 2002