citrin@ucbvax.UUCP (07/02/83)
Date: 1 Jul 83 20:54:33 PDT (Fri) From: citrin (Wayne Citrin) Message-Id: <8307020354.AA29729@UCBVAX.ARPA> To: net-movies Subject: War Games With all this flaming about realism, nobody seems to have mentioned that "War Games" is just not a very good movie from a dramatic viewpoint. The film makers took two interesting and timely problems: the increasing complexity of military technology and the possible loss of control over same, and the problem of computer security. They raised these problems in the first half of the film in an exciting way, but found that they could not resolve them in the second half of the film without bringing in a mad scientist. Essentially, the movie was a cop-out. When I told someone who liked the film that I felt disappointed by the ending, his reply was "What did you want? For the world to be blown up?" Come to thing of it, that might have been a good ending. It would have been more courageous than the ending that the film did have, which said in effect "Don't worry about it too much. Every- thing's gonna be all right in the end." For the reasonably good production values, two stars (**), but no more. Wayne Citrin (ucbvax!citrin)