Way back in the mid 1980s, when I was just a naive college kid, when Ronald Reagan and a series of ancient Soviet leaders traded insults and threats on a daily basis, the idea of nuclear annihilation seemed so real and so imminent that I and many of my contemporaries simply assumed that we'd come to our eventual end in that manner. A host of movies popped up during those years that made sure we all knew how horrible the destruction of humanity was going to be.
In the midst of all the carnage, though, came "WarGames," which showed the layperson just how all this Armageddon stuff was planned out and argued about and engineered. I had never heard of NORAD, missile silos or launch codes--heck, I wasn't even sure what the Joint Chiefs of Staff did. But after "WarGames," I felt like an expert--or at least as much of one as the government would let the rest of us feel like. I was captivated by the idea of this giant facility inside a mountain with giant steel doors and computers that could literally end the world. I was fascinated by the simple joys of computer ownership--the now-crude modems that would allow you to change your grades or erase your phone bills just by knowing one simple password, the huge floppy disks that opened the electronic doors, the monotone of the computer-generated voice coming out of the speaker.
The plot of "WarGames" is disarmingly (get it??) simple and seemingly incongruous: geeky high-school kid accidentally breaks into the U.S. nuclear defense system and convinces the computer that the Soviets are about to attack. But, being the conspiracy theorist I am, I couldn't help but ask myself: How many times has this really happened? And could it happen again? The answer's obvious to anyone who pays attention to the news of computer viruses or spy hackers: of course it could.
When you watch "WarGames," try not to get too caught up in the errors John Badham and his editing staff made in putting it together--there are enough to fill pages in a book. Try not to get too annoyed at Ally Sheedy's character, who's so vacuous that she makes Pamela Anderson seem like Madeleine Albright. And try not to ask yourself how Matthew Broderick automatically knows that the nearest airport to Goose Island, Oregon is in Salem. Instead, sit back and enjoy Dabney Coleman, Barry Corbin and John Wood's performances. And remember that, while all of us feel a bit more secure now than we did then, that this scenario may not be too far out of the realm of possibility.
I've seen this movie so many times that I literally have all the dialogue memorized. And I laugh out loud sometimes at the inplausibility of some scenes. Yet every time it comes on TV, I'm glued to the set and riveted again. There's just something I love about it.
Matthew Broderick (Ferris Bueller s Day Off) and Ally Sheedy (The Breakfast Club) star in this compelling drama filled with action, suspense and high-...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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