Protraph
Lack of good storyline.
Ginger
Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.
Walter Sloane
Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.
Brent Burkwell
The left starts out showing their utter ignorance concerning nuclear weapons. First of all, the men who monitor the "button" do NOT use revolvers, very unlikely. Next, the mutually assured destruction that the left fears so much, is actually what kept us safe for all of these years after WWII. If the USA had done away with all nuclear weapons, Russia and China would now be in control of the entire world. That is a fact. The reason we don't need to fear is that Russian's and Chinese are too intelligent to believe that the would get away with using their arsenal, they would not. Therefore, this movie makes it clear, keeping and even increasing a nuclear arsenal is the best way to keep the lunatic Russians and Chinese from taking over the world. But lefties won't understand this, they are too filled with stupidity and lack the basic common sense necessary to resolve problems.
poe-48833
There was a time, believe it or not, when I thought that the basic premise of WARGAMES was too far beyond the pale: no way, thought I, would the corporate government of THIS company (the "united" $tate$ of ameriKa) allow itself to be made so Vulnerable that a KID could tap into its innermost Darkest Secrets. Well, in DJ Trump's ameriKa, it's not only POSSIBLE, but it may very well have already HAPPENED. The Divider-In-Chief (DIC, for short) has asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation to announce that his alleged ties to Russian cronies was just not so, that his hands were clean; that he hadn't engaged in treasonous activities prior to the recent so-called election; that he isn't (as Bill Maher put it) "Agent Orange" and Putin isn't the REAL president. (ONE thing's for certain: the Electoral College, which, we're told, was meant to PREVENT a Madman from becoming president, instead undermined the will of The People and gave us ol' DJ... whose Madness is open to debate. And, lest we Forget: the democraps HELPED put him in orifice. We've already had a ban on Muslims entering this company, mass deportations of wanna-be immigrants, a $75M aircraft lost in a military mission, and the murder of a dozen or so children in DJ's first authorized drone strike. There's Blood on a LOT of hands these days... The recent disruptions at republican Town Hall Meetings are clear signs of Things To Come. They can PROFITize all they want, it's well past Time for a Reality Check. Check out Keith Olbermann's THE RESISTANCE or Amy Goodman's DEMOCRACY NOW! for the latest Real World news.)
FloodClearwater
For Generation X, Matthew Broderick is the eternal James Joyce character of American film. Ferris Bueller's Day Off is, obviously, our Ulysses. In this same regard, WarGames is our equivalent of Finnegan's Wake, a caged meditation on the riverine forms of time and reality which flings the audience through fantastic voyages of understanding only to deposit them back at their starting point, not mildly discomfited.One of the simple joys of this movie is watching John Wood as Falken, the cloistered computer science genius who develops JOSHUA, the artificial intelligence software at the heart of the plot. Wood's Falken is endlessly interesting to watch as the understated guru the protagonist journeys to seek enlightenment from. Wood was a lifelong Shakespearean when he signed on to the film, and his presence is judiciously carmelizing to the story and the rest of the troupe. Dabney Coleman gives a supple performance as McKittrick. McK is an is-he or isn't-he near-villain, a character with a point of view presaging everything officially sticky and tricky about the ends- means world of drones, waterboarding, and extraordinary rendition we find ourselves in.Ally Sheedy is elliptically interesting to follow as the protag's buddy Jennifer. Barry Corbin is perfectly cast as the blustering NORAD general, Beringer, an anti-Falken and the personification of why AI might be a tool worth having.Which brings us to Broderick himself, playing the lead role of David Lightman. Broderick's invention of his character goes beyond the 'Playbill' conception of him; a young, bored, 'but brilliant' computer hacker. As brought on screen by Broderick, David is both naive and worldly, baffled and mesmeric, Quixotic and cautious, in other words, he is a 360 degree person, spun and sewn by the sheer chi of Broderick's actorly brio (and also restraint). In this way, for American movie- going children of a certain vintage, Broderick's portrayal of David Lightman is every bit as canonical to the patina of generational and nationalistic shared-identity as his Ferris Bueller would be.A final celluloid bontemp WarGames delivers is the tiny, early-on role played by an undiscovered Michael Madsen as a junior NORAD launch officer. "Turn your key, sir!" And we watch and hope those keys don't turn, so that Matthew Broderick, JOSHUA, and the the rest can race disaster down the full lengths of the necessity of human prudence before depositing us back to the place we start their frantic meditation at, a blank, darkened screen with a waiting cursor.
David Conrad
"WarGames" is so much more fun than it has a right to be. Being a 1983 movie that trades heavily in technical jargon and low-res computer readouts, it should feel hopelessly dated; it doesn't. As a movie that makes plucky teens its heroes, it should feel juvenile and frivolous; it doesn't. Since its plot is an explicit reaction to Cold War tensions, it should come across as heavy-handed and moralizing; it doesn't. Good acting, writing, and directing—the basics of movie-making—conspire to avoid these pitfalls, seemingly almost in spite of themselves.Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy were two of the most successful teen stars of the 80s for a reason. They look and talk like the kids next door. In this movie, both of their characters would be artificially, almost eerily normal, the Hollywood version of "average" kids, except that they're both just a little bit "off" in ways that aren't necessarily intended but are nevertheless endearing and refreshing. Broderick, probably by nature rather than decision, underplays everything even in the face of nuclear Armageddon, and this works because it keeps the tone light. Another way to balance the apocalyptic plot that places tens of millions of lives on the line would have been to make the acting comically over-the-top, but this would not have been as relatable and would quickly have become tiresome. As for Sheedy's character, she could easily have been just another movie girlfriend relegated to the sidelines, but the script adds idiosyncrasies and Sheedy brings a playfulness that keeps her sharing the spotlight for most of the film. She rides a motorcycle on which Broderick's character rides behind her, a fact that goes rightly unremarked in the movie but which I think deserves approbation from commenters, and she has a charismatic way of sauntering freely into places she isn't expected.The set design has the visual appeal of a Bond movie, with a huge, flashy command center, an underground bunker, and an antagonist's plush island retreat. The camera has lots of room to play among these sets, but the scenes in Broderick's prosaic classroom, closet-sized school office, and cluttered bedroom look small and cramped. His escape from them into the wider, more dangerous world of high-stakes espionage therefore feels like breaking free, and it is a journey we want to go on instead of nitpicking the nonsense of it all. The script gets away with a lot of loose logic because it moves so fast and keeps introducing new twists. Instead of just explaining himself to the authorities (who are doubly stupid here: they have the stupidity of military brass in an anti-war movie and the stupidity of adults in a teen movie), Broderick goes it alone. When the military is told they're playing a game, they persist in thinking it's real, and when Broderick is told early on that his "game" is "definitely military" software, he promptly "plays" it anyway. But the movie knows what it's doing, even if the characters don't, and makes a point of the lack of distinction between games and reality for the computers that we program to manage both. It sounds like a sci-fi premise, but in a rarity for sci-fi and "hacker" movies, the script gets a lot of the technical language right. Like, for example, the concept of "computer learning," which in the movie and often in real life is explored through games of tic-tac- toe.Though in many ways a relic of the '80s, "WarGames"'s smart decisions keep it entertaining for more than just the nostalgic.
