Review: War Games: The Dead Code (spoiler)

I was scrolling through the digital cable guide and spotted the words “War Games” so I had to check it out. It was a new movie, 2008 called War Games: The Dead Code starring Matt Lanter and Amanda Walsh. The description in the guide said:

In 1983, a teen computer hacker played a doomsday game against a government computer. In this thrilling sequel, another high school online whiz wreaks havoc when he hacks into a secret government program.

I went into it expecting that it wouldn’t be the greatest move ever, and nowhere near as good as the original. It is a good thing that I set my expectations low, because, well, it just wasn’t a blockbuster. But here is the reason I’m not a movie reviewer, because, I enjoyed watching it anyway!

Now, for some plot. Basically, instead of playing global thermonuclear war, there was something else that I can’t quite remember. Global thermonuclear war made a cameo, of course, it was on the list of games, they pointed to it with the mouse and acknowledged it, but went on to the other game. Basically, the computer, R.I.P.L.E.Y. is some sort of automated anti-terrorist computer that is supposed to automatically find terrorists based on computer algorithms and kill them. Of course, through a series of mostly innocent actions, the teen gets flagged by the computer as a terrorist, and the chase is on.

Guess who is back? Dr. Stephen Falken, back from the dead, again. Not played by John Wood this time, but Gary Reineke makes a good older Falken. An even more important returning character from 1983 is Joshua, AKA the W.O.P.R., which has been running a power grid somewhere up in Canada. The plan is to use Joshua to fight against R.I.P.L.E.Y. There is a lot of cheesy action, this time, instead of tic – tac – toe they teach R.I.P.L.E.Y. that the only winning move is not to play with antichess, which they call suicide chess.

Yes, its cheesy, but I still enjoyed it.