Product Details

• Actors: Colm Feore, Amanda Walsh, Matt Lanter, Nicholas Wright
• Directors: Stuart Gillard
• Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Language: English
• Subtitles: English, Spanish
• Dubbed: French, Spanish
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
• DVD Release Date: July 29, 2008
• Run Time: 100 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0015NORDM
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #116,815 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

A quarter-century after the 1983 hit film War Games, starring Matthew Broderick as a teen who taps into a military computer and nearly starts World War III, comes War Games: The Dead Code, a sequel for the digital age. Immersed in post-9/11 paranoia, the story concerns Philadelphia high-schooler Will Farmer (Matt Lanter), inadvertently linked to a terrorist organization while playing an online game with a secret government computer called "Ripley." On the run in Quebec with a girlfriend, Annie (Amanda Walsh), Will tries to stay ahead of authorities using only his wits. Until, that is, Will and Annie run into Dr. Stephen Falken (Gary Reineke), a character introduced in War Games as one of the "Joshua" computer program's inventors and now widely thought to be dead. Meanwhile, Ripley's keepers cast a net over Will's life--even arresting his mother--but eventually come to see that Ripley is attempting to overtake control over everything and lead civilization, once again, to the brink of Armageddon.

Handsomely directed by Stuart Gillard (television's Charmed), the visually busy War Games: The Dead Code makes much of a modest budget. A bunch of fine, Canadian actors give the computer-jargon-filled story a lot of dramatic muscle and interesting conflict to chew on, particularly Colm Feore as Ripley's arrogant program manager and Chuck Shamata as one of the doomsday machine's handlers. The film's suspenseful build to a thrilling climax is sometimes a little hard to follow, but one gets the idea just fine. --Tom Keogh

Product Description

A brilliant computer hacker must race against time and away from the FBI as he inadvertently begins World War III in this thrilling sequel to the smash hit WarGames.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 48 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars No, no, no, no, no.... August 8, 2008

By The Music Man

Format:DVD

How can a studio have such a wonderful product to build upon, and screw it up so badly? The original War Games was filled with wonderful, sympathetic HUMAN characters, funny moments amid the rising drama, and a wonderful sense of pace and build. The Dead Code has NONE of this, substituting MTV-like editing, suspense-free drama, and amoral characters who you want to slap from the first moment. How to count the wrongs? The "Bimbo Bomb" at the very beginning? The completely inept chase scene where speeding cars CANNOT catch up with the on-foot suspects? The mother character who is introduced, and then dropped like a lead brick? The final scene which does nothing more than copy the original message? The non-existent chemistry between the two leads? The only good parts of this film are when they bring back elements from the original film, but those pleasures are few and far between. This one is awful from the word go. Watch the original instead.

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Subpar all around November 9, 2010

By dgatwood

Format:DVD

They couldn't even get the person who played Falken to fake a British accent? Really?

This movie is riddled with plot holes so big you can drive a truck through it: It went off the mark because they tried to make it into more of a thriller/horror movie rather than Sci-Fi, and as a result, it has all the technical accuracy of a horror movie with lightning striking the ground and magically traveling up away from the ground to strike somebody on top of a two story building. Yeah, it's really that insanely wrong. Here's a partial list of the more egregious mistakes:

* A guy diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer is running around keeping up with a bunch of kids.

* A predator drone manages to fly from LA to Philadelphia by way of Canada, then continues to D.C. Actual range of a predator drone from L.A.: about as far as Albuquerque, NM. In the real world, it would have to land for refueling three times even if it made a direct flight to D.C. without flying through Canada.

* This missile had the ability to take out the entire population of Washington D.C. In reality, even with a Reaper, you get four missiles and two laser-guided bombs. In the best case, you'd only blow six craters that are a few hundred feet across. You might get lucky and kill a single-digit percentage of D.C. Not even close to 100%. That's just laughable. Even with six daisy cutter bombs (each of which weighs twice the total weight capacity of a predator drone), you'd only destroy a little over two square miles, or barely 5% of the area of Washington D.C., not counting nearby structural damage due to the pressure wave. The very idea that a single predator drone with a nonnuclear payload could wipe out Washington D.C. is preposterous.

* Do you honestly expect me to believe that the military would design a predator drone without a kill switch?

* Or that the military couldn't scramble a jet to shoot it down in the entire DAY it would take a predator to fly such a route at maximum speed (135 MPH)?

* Or that the U.S. military would design a system in which the destruction of Washington, D.C. would trigger a dead man's switch that nukes the planet, despite no damage to NORAD or to Air Force One, where those missiles are actually controlled?

* The computer system is in a room full of carbon dioxide. People repair it how?

* The computer system looks like it is some gamer PC blown up to room size.

* The military somehow manages to have real-time access to hundreds of security cameras in a foreign country, yet cannot figure out how to shut off a computer in the next room.

* The Canadian police can't figure out how to head someone off when they are on foot.

* Falken has to empty his gas can into his tank just to reach the power plant. How was he planning to get back?

* Why is the Canadian power plant run by a former Cosmonaut? That just seems entirely arbitrary and bizarre.

* And seriously? The U.S. government has resorted to blackmailing people for information now?

* And rather than apprehend the kid at the airport, they apprehended his friend because they thought somebody associated with a terrorist cell who was traveling on a school field trip would somehow lead them to other members of the cell despite having no history of communicating with Canadians?

* And they knowingly let a presumed dangerous person on board and did not recall the plane because?

* And in spite of the fact that the only person he led them to was the girl he flew with, they suddenly decided to move in and capture him anyway?

* And what kind of stalker geek memorizes the model of a girl's cell phone so that he can have an appropriate data cable with him just in case he has to borrow her phone to use as a network connection?

* And why did they do that when he enabled a wireless connection on the computer he was connecting to just a few seconds previous to this?

* And how can you track the location of a cell phone that is down inside a subway tunnel? Unless there are cells in the subway tunnel, you probably won't even get a ping response, much less be able to triangulate in any useful fashion.

And so on. This movie is so bad it hurts.

The most egregious mistake in the first WarGames movie (apart from the suspension of disbelief about the premise of a computer that could learn well enough to do what it did) was that an acoustic coupler modem can't typically hang up the phone, which means it generally can't be used as an autodialer. And I'm not quite clear why shorting the microphone would get you a dial tone on a pay phone. (There were ways to do it back then, but I'm not aware of that being one of them.) Both of those details are so far beyond what the average person would know, though, that I can overlook them. This sequel, by contrast was like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Every time you turned around, there was something else glaringly wrong. Why can't Hollywood writers at least hire just one person knowledgeable about technology before putting out a screenplay? These are just the flaws that were obvious off the top of my head at the end of the movie without me actively looking for flaws.... *sigh*

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Wargames 2 - More like # 2 in the literal sense. May 8, 2009

By Bradley A. Beaupain

Format:DVD

I must agree with all the people who reviewed this in the resounding negative. The trailer that was shown at the one night 25th anniversary showing of the original was probably better. This version had the feel of a TV movie and without the references to the original characters(WOPR/Joshua and Steven Falken)it probably could have stood on its own. Unfortunately there would not have been a reason to tie it in with the original and thus people would be confused....It was fast paced, almost too fast and predictble yet at the same time, it was longer than necessary. It was a great premise, but perhaps if directed(and written) in the same style of John Badham, it would (could) have been better. Maybe watching it back to back with the original would help it, if only for a bit. The end segment reference makes it unable to stand on its own as without the reference to the end of the original, the entire point of the movie is lost. Unfortunately, not well written, it's almost as if someone took the original screenplay, changed a few scenes, added a few (non-caring or useless)characters and then hit print and then someone greenlighted it.......I won't even comment on the B and C list actors an their acting ability, or perhaps it is the director's fault. In any case, if you are a fan of the original, I won't insult your intelligence by saying you will or won't like it. I can't assume that you will or won't. Rent it before you buy it so that you can make the decision on whether to add it to your collection or not. Fortunately, I am not out any money on this as my local library had a copy.