War Games (1983)

War Games (1983): written by Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes; directed by John Badham; starring Matthew Broderick (David), Dabney Coleman (McKittrick), John Wood (Falken), Ally Sheedy (Jennifer), and Barry Corbin (General Beringer): This Young Adult Cold War thriller holds up remarkably well. Not only did it make Matthew Broderick a star, it influenced American policy on hackers after President Reagan screened the film.

Broderick is certainly believable as a young hacker (dig that early 1980's computer tech!) who wants to steal some video games and instead talks the Pentagon's Artificial Intelligence into starting World War Three. What larks, Pip, what larks!

The movie succeeds in part on the charisma of all of its main actors, from the prissy, pissy Dabney Coleman as the Pentagon's chief computer scientist to Barry Corbin (later of Northern Exposure) as a grumpy, salt-of-the-earth General, John Wood as AI-designer Falken, and Broderick and Ally Sheedy as our high-school leads.

But the writing is sharp as well, though Broderick's ability to escape NORAD HQ in Cheyenne Mountain requires a certain suspension of disbelief. It's hard to imagine a big-budget summer movie today ending as this one does -- not with a half-hour action sequence, but with a bunch of people talking to a computer in a room. John Badham keeps things moving nicely, and his matter-of-fact cinematography keeps things rooted in at least the semblance of the real. Recommended.

Where Will the Little Green Man Be Next?

Time Out of Joint (1959) by Philip K. Dick: The geniuses at Vintage who packaged up the 2002 reprint of this Philip K. Dick novel put a major, mid-novel plot reveal in the back-cover synopsis. Way to go, guys! One can enjoy Time Out of Joint while already being aware of its major plot twist, but the thrill of that discovery, painstakingly built up to by Dick, should be part of the experience of reading the novel. In a perfect world, anyway.

Ragle Gumm (there's a name!) is a man living in a small, Western American town in 1959. He doesn't have a job, exactly. That's because he's the world champion solver of puzzles in the local newspaper. Specifically, a daily brain-teaser called "Where Will the Little Green Man Be Next?". Ragle Gumm has an innate gift for recognizing and exploiting patterns. And that's what the newspaper contest offers, day after day, year after year.

He's also single, living with his sister and brother-in-law, and half-in-love with the flirtatious wife of his annoying, intrusive neighbour. Ragle is also getting tired of spending hours every day on the contest. But what's a guy to do?

Time Out of Joint is stellar, fairly early work from Dick. Its characters are nicely drawn, illuminated with a level of psychology Dick hadn't used before in his long-form works. The mystery is a satisfying one, satisfyingly handled. And as often happened in Dick's novels, there really aren't any "bad guys" per se, simply confused people orbiting around the central confusion of Life Itself.

The novel's also an interesting look at 1950's nuclear paranoia as reflected and refracted through Dick's uncommonly odd perceptions and interpretations. When Time Out of Joint first appeared in hardcover in 1959, it was billed as 'A Novel of Menace' on its front cover. That's a pretty good description -- but it's also a novel of recognizable, human characters caught up in the machinery of an absurd, cruel world, trying to make sense of things, trying to make the universe be just a little bit kinder. Highly recommended.

Necessary Assassinations

The Debt, written by Matthew Vaughn, Jane Goldman, and Peter Straughan; based on the Israeli film Ha-Hov, written by Assaf Bernstein and Ido Rosenblum; directed by John Madden; starring Helen Mirren & Jessica Chastain (Rachel 1997/Rachel 1966), Tom Wilkinson & Marton Csokas (Stephan 1997/Stephan 1966), Ciaran Hinds & Sam Worthington (David 1997/ David 1966), and Jesper Christensen (Dieter Vogel - The Surgeon of Birkenau) (2011): Tense little thriller with a big name cast, adapted from an Israeli film. In late 1965, a three-person Mossad team was dispatched to East Germany to locate and apprehend Nazi war criminal "The Surgeon of Birkenau" so that he may be tried for his war-time crimes in Israel.

In 1997, the daughter of Rachel, one of the three Mossad, writes a book about the now-legendary operation. Her mother doesn't seem too happy about, and neither do the other two former agents, one the daughter's father, the other a wanderer who has just returned to Israel after twenty years abroad. And then things start happening.

As much of the pleasure of the film lies in the revelations of what is and is not 'real,' it's difficult to summarize the plot any further. The workings of the kidnapping plan seem realistically byzantine and thus prone to failure at every turn; the actors in both eras do fine work (though Jessica Chastain really doesn't look at all like Helen Mirren); the ambience of Communist Berlin is suitably wormy and dilapidated and devoid of sunlight. When the team returns to Israel, they're greeted by a burst of sunlight as they exit their military plane. But the difference between Israel and Berlin is not that ethically clear-cut. Recommended.