A young computer whizz kid accidentally connects into a top secret super-computer which has complete control over the U.S. nuclear arsenal. It challenges him to a game between America and Russia, and he innocently starts the countdown to World War 3. Can he convince the computer he wanted to play a game and not the real thing ?
Born in England, John Badham became a naturalized American citizen at the age of seven. He received a BA and MFA at Yale University, which he attended before and after his military service. He worked his way up the professional ladder at Universal Studios; his first directorial assignments included the trailers (or coming-attraction reels) of the studio’s features. In the early 1970s, Badham gained a good reputation as an able director of made-for-TV movies. It was his handling of the 1974 docudrama The Gun that won Badham his first theatrical-feature assignment, the 1975 baseball flick The Bingo Long Travelling All-Stars and Motor Kings (Badham was a last-minute choice when Steven Spielberg suddenly priced himself out of the film’s budget thanks to Jaws). Badham’s first bona-fide—and indeed, one of the biggest moneymakers of the 1970s—was the disco-driven Saturday Night Fever (1977). The director’s striking visual sense and innate gift for montage has served him well in such nailbiters… read more
A very fun film, extremely well acted and directed, just dont expect anything close to realism in it. In 1984, when few of us had computers, it didnt seem so ridiculous of an idea, but now when you watch him turn off his PC and it causes the screens in the War Room to shut down too, its impossible not to laugh derisively. Still, the film is so entertaining that it's just about impossible to hate it.
It 15 minutes to get to finally get to the protagonist, boring me to death. Rest of the story in the beginning felt slow-paced but as it got closer to the 1 hour mark, the story FINALLY got started but events were too rushed and I ended up thinking the movie was decent for the DIY escape tricks.
