WarGames
It is the story of that student who made a big noise. The events began when David Layman, a high school student, accidentally penetrated a military supercomputer while searching for new video games. Perhaps it will be very disastrous at those moments when a confrontation of global dimensions begins World War III at a difficult time.
13 February 1944, Safford, Arizona, USA
15 June 1933, USA
19 December 1943, Ohio, USA
14 October 1918, San Diego, California, USA
25 January 1936, New York City, New York, USA
1 March 1942, Westbury, New York, USA
17 May 1938, Chicago, Illinois, USA
9 September 1943, Gary, Indiana, USA
25 September 1958, Chicago, Illinois, USA
11 November 1955, Englewood, New Jersey, USA
22 January 1961, Wiesbaden, Hesse, Germany
10 February 1947, Claremore, Oklahoma, USA
13 March 1950, Miami, Florida, USA
13 June 1962, New York City, New York, USA
17 July 1952, San Francisco, California, USA
27 December 1950, Harlem, New York City, New York, USA
16 October 1940, Lamesa, Texas, USA
31 July 1921, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA
July 30, 2013
Time might not have been kind to the look of WarGames, but with nuclear war still a very real threat, the picture's ability to manufacture suspense remains undimmed.
July 30, 2013
It's far too simplistic for comfort -- and downright dangerous if it makes anyone think today's self-destructive forces will bow jovially out of sight as soon as we grown-ups loosen up a little.
July 30, 2013
Slick and suspenseful, though a little heavy-handed.
March 14, 2008
As tense and effective now as it was 25 years ago. The worry back then was more about Soviet missiles than about credit card identity theft, but good filmmaking techniques haven't changed.
July 30, 2013
What keeps it remarkably fresh is an unpatronising approach to what is ostensibly a kids' thriller, and a set of ideas (remember when Hollywood used them?) that rightly consign all the cradle modems and dot-matrix printers to the margins.
January 26, 2006
The first half has a sardonic edge to it, but the more seriously the movie takes itself the sillier it gets.
April 30, 2009
To me, the most enjoyable aspect of WarGames is when David is at work on his computer system. There's something wonderfully nostalgic about watching a guy play with such antiquated machinery and recognize that it was [once] considered state-of-the-art.
July 30, 2013
This inventive nail-biter is very much a product of its time -- blending the arms-race unease of the early 1980s with the beginning of the home-computer revolution -- but it still manages to both grip and entertain.
March 26, 2009
John Badham solders the pieces into a terrifically exciting story charged by an irresistible idea: an extra-smart kid can get the world into a whole lot of trouble that it also takes the same extra-smart kid to rescue it from.
October 23, 2004
As a premise for a thriller, this is a masterstroke.
July 30, 2013
Classic humanist-didactic filmmaking, effectively presented as a thriller.
