The Age of Commercialism

Excellent but underrated film

Absolutely brilliant

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

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.

Ally Sheedy and Matthew Broderick, a couple of kids, become involved in something that is far beyond them. Broderick, who knows computers (in1983), inadvertently gets into a game (or so he thinks) of Thermonuclear War. It turns out that he has actually hacked into a military program that is feeding the U.S. information about that very subject. It's not a game as he thought it was but he also realizes what is happening. Now the problem is that he needs to convince someone what is going on, and they, then, have to put a stop to it. Think what little effect the computer world had in those days and realize how dangerous they have become. Good chemistry by two future stars.

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.

I liked this movie when it came out and I like it even more now. A very young Matthew Broderick plays a computer geek who stumbles his way into a super secret site linked to a computer with programs replicating nuclear war. At the same time your gumment decides to use the computer to activate nuclear missiles in the event of war. You can connect the dots for what happens next. There are some really special performances, including Ally Sheedy as Broderick's "little friend" (and absolutely enchanting); Corbin as crusty General Beringer; and Wood as the fascinating Dr. Falken. Some of the stuff could be a little hard to accept - like how fast Broderick and Sheedy get around to places towards the end - but it's all so wonderfully played out that it doesn't really matter. You also get a neat look at the very start of the PC age. A true cinema gem of the 80s.