WarGames

You never know where these things show up. 

Over the Holidays, I was reading Garret M. Graff's intriguingly titled book "Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government's Secret Plan to Save Itself While the Rest of Us Die", when a fascinating passage about a movie showed up. More about that after a look at the film that was mentioned.

WarGames (Martin Brest/John Badham 1983) Seattle high-schooler David Lightman (Matthew Broderick) is a bit of a video-game whiz. Not adept at regularly taking out the garbage, he is quite unique at tasks of a more idle nature. And dishonest. He manages to find his way into his high school's computer to change his grades and those of his friend, Jennifer Mack (Ally Sheedy). When he hears that a new version of a game that he's expert at is about to put on the market, he uses a phone algorithm to speed-dial through the permutations, but is blocked from getting into it by a firewall.

After some consultation with some game enthusiasts/hackers at the University of Washington, he learns of "back-doors" that can be used to get into databases. He's intrigued by one web-site but frustrated that he can't get through its firewall, but the program addresses him as "Dr. Falken," and he uses that nugget of information to do some research and come up with the right security password—"Joshua", the name of Falken's child (now deceased).

But, unbeknownst to him, he hasn't logged into a video-game web-site; he's logged into NORAD, one the nation's defense hubs, and gleefully starts to play a game called "Global Thermonuclear War."

It's no game. At NORAD headquarters, they see the launch simulation as an actual attack, as they don't know what the source is. A new program is underway at NORAD as there has been a noted reluctance on the part of personnel to launch attacks during drills* and director McKittrick (Dabney Coleman) has put the launch controls in the virtual hands of an automated system called the WOPR (War Operation Plan Response). That would be semi-okay if there was an actual launch detected instead of a kid playing around in his bedroom. But before any launch codes can be acquired, the attack is stopped...just like that.

But, the signal is traced back to the source. And, before you can say "you have the right to remain silent," David is arrested and charged with espionage. It seems the WOPR is still running simulations as it has made no differentiation between David's simulated game and an actual attack. Despite this, in a section that strains credulity a bit, given the security at any NORAD facility, David manages to escape the underground complex and, with Jennifer's help, enlists the aid of retired Professor Stephen Falken (John Wood), who is persuaded to come back to the NORAD facility in an attempt to circumvent a triggering of World War III.

It's a fun movie—the switch-over from Brest to Badham was to ensure that the film's touch was lighter than originally intended—but, there are still moments of genuine unease, as the automated systems still manage to continue cogitating, briskly running through possible launch code configurations and attack scenario's that bathe the elaborate NORAD set in an un-eathly light as the screens white-out with displays of nuclear annihilation (kudo's to John Rubinstein's score in that section). The "game"-plan to teach the system the difference between game-theory and "mutually assured destruction" is a bit of a stretch, but as long as the world doesn't blow up, you'll take any way out of it.

Now, a couple things. The first is the conception of Dr. Stephen Falken. The character was based on Stephen Hawking, and the cosmologist was approached to actually play the role while the script was being developed. He refused, because, at this point in his battle with ALS, he felt his appearance might be exploited. The next person the writers turned to was, of all people, John Lennon, who expressed interest in the role, but was assassinated in 1980. Imagine John Lennon in WarGames (I wonder if you can).

But, the most interesting thing about WarGames was its impact after its release. Co-writer Larry Lasker was a friend of President Ronald Reagan, and one night, Reagan settled down at Camp David for a screening of the film. The film affected him deeply, and returning to Washington, he began to make inquiries about hacking and whether what he saw in the film might actually occur. As the film was scrupulously researched with experts from the RAND Corporation and the Stanford Research Institute, he was assured that, yes, such a thing was possible, and not only that, probable. Reagan did two things: he began discussing the film with members of Congress, the Joint Chiefs, and others, leading to NSDD-145, a National Security Directive on securing government computers from cyber-attack.

He also changed his priorities about nuclear weapons. The first years of Reagan's presidency saw him cautioning about military weakness in the face of, what he termed, "The Evil Empire" of Soviet Russia, starting an massive escalation in the military budget. After WarGames, he turned his attention to negotiating with Soviet leaders about nuclear disarmament and reducing tensions (and targets) between the two countries. 

After WarGames. 

It is hard to say exactly what influence a "kid's movie" might have on national policy, but its message of "the only winning move is not to play" still resonates, albeit there are "some" who still hold to the idea that a thermonuclear war is "winnable."

They just haven't figured out who would be left to "declare" it.

* There is an opening scene depicting just that happenstance, and the two grunts locked in that conflict ("TURN your KEY, sir!") are portrayed by John Spencer and Michael Madsen.

** In my past life as a audio engineer, I had the opportunity to work with and get to know one of the actors in the film, Barry Corbin, who plays Gen. Jack Beringer. When I first met Corbin, I was a little skeptical of his huge cowboy hat and thick Texas drawl because I'd seen him in this film and the drawl wasn't there. I thought he might be putting on "cowboy airs." But, he was born in West Texas and he comes by it genuinely (He IS an actor, after all...). I also came to find him an extraordinarily talented and well-read, sophisticated gentleman (He did one of those things I love to see actors do—he had a script for a 60 second commercial that in his first run-through he did in 90 seconds, and then, without benefit of any editing, proceeded to do a second "take" that was precisely 60 seconds and just as nuanced, albeit rushed—he just wanted to see if he could actually do it!). He was working on the TV show "Northern Exposure" (which was filmed in the area) and he had frequent calls to do voice-over work, and I found him to be a fascinating, gifted individual. I asked him once why he chose to play Deputy Roscoe Brown, a very gullible and low-brow character in the mini-series "Lonesome Dove" and he said "You just want to be a part of something that special...any part." 

The Hateful Eight

Just a Liar's Promise
or
Tarantino's Wasteland

The tag line says it all: "The 8th Film by Quentin Tarantino." And in the cackling obviousness that now seems to be part and parcel of what passes for the film output of Quentin Tarantino (except when he's doing in-jokes that are only discernible to the slavish) the title of it is The Hateful Eight. Hateful it is, a movie dominated by good actors playing the worst people in the world in what can only be called a Western torture porn with delusions of drawing-room-detection. Every one in it is the lowest of the low with pretensionss of forthrightness that only serve as fodder for the other characters to stick pins in or blow away with more shots than necessary. Oh, there are good people (and by that I mean non-desperate socio-pathic characters) in it, in but one chapter of the six that the writer-director segments his movie into, but their screen-time is the bare minimum. Like the blacklist in the speech that finalizes Trumbo, The Hateful Eight has no heroes or villains, only victims. 

And an audience member could easily identify with the victimization.

Look, I've always been on the fence about Tarantino. His early films I found flashy, but forced, the dialogue clever in a sophomoric and frequently irrelevant way. He was a kid showing off, usually at the expense of the talents of others as he would "borrow" from the cob-webbed end of the video aisle for his ideas. Nothing wrong with that. There's a lot of "cribbing" going on in the first films of directors. And sometimes, he does something surprising—I'm a big admirer of Jackie Brown and Inglourious Basterds. I thought his half of the double-bill, Grindhouse, Death Car, was a wickedly conceived—if drawn out—feminist tract. Those and pieces of Pulp Fiction, that's all I like. Two and half, maybe three films. The rest of them?

"Got room for one more?"

There's not much to enjoy or admire here, save for a few performances that stand out—Samuel L. Jackson's best acting in years, the return of Jennifer Jason Leigh who has always been a fearless actor, Kurt Russell's bravura performance, and a slippery, inconsistent one by Walter Goggins. The rest is Tarantino writing dialogue that goes on forever, punctuated by gun-fire and blood-spatter by the gallon, often with the intention of comic effect.

 

And to photograph this thing in 70 MM is the highest form of pretense.

The 70 mm format was designed for wide open spaces and vast vistas-(as well as snakes, trains, and funeral corteges). But more importantly, for horizons (and the more majestic the better) to take advantage of the sharpness and clarity of image the larger format provides. It's ideal for nature in the raw, less so for cities that strain and grow on the wrong axis out of frame. It is certainly a waste of format for a set-bound movie that does it's best to invoke cabin fever for 90% of it's nearly 3 hour length. Using 70 MM for this type of film is like using a SCUD to shoot down a duck. It's less a good artistic choice than a case of "Master"-envy on Tarantino's part.

The opening (and it's shot by the eccentric, but extraordinarily talented Robert Richardson, who Tarantino's been using for a while now) tries to cram as much scenic beauty as it can to last, but it is then followed up by such unremitting ugliness in image and spirit, that the effect is like putting a bow on a tarantula.

 

It's all downhill from the first line: "Room for one more?" says Major Marquis Warren (Jackson), the first of many characters to be revealed by the upturning of a hat-brim—wide-screen is good for that, too—as he echoes the line of the hearse-coach in Dead of Night. 

The Major is a bounty-hunter and he's sitting on some work as he's approached by a stagecoach bearing two passengers, John "The Hangman" Ruth (Russell) a shaggy-dog of a bounty hunter hand-cuffed to Daisey Domergue (Leigh) the spitfire sister of outlaw Jody Domergue. He's taking her to the town of Red Rock to be hanged for her crimes—that is, if she survives the trip. One of the running gags of The Hateful Eight is that Daisey is such a disagreeable little cuss that Ruth regularly punches, pistol-whips and clobbers her at every snarling offense (At one point, Ruth says: "Now, Daisey, I want us to work out a signal system of communication. When I elbow you real hard in the face, that means: shut up" as if he hasn't already worked out this system by example earlier than the movie began). Our first sight of her takes in a busted lip and a black-eye. Over the course of the movie, she suffers every non-lethal injury associated with the movie until, by the end, she bears a striking resemblance to Carrie at the prom, caked in blood acquired from all manner of splatters from nearly every member of the cast. If they had pattern analysis back in the day, all investigators would need for a thorough study of the crime scene would be her.

The coach acquires another passenger as a mountain blizzard starts to impede its progress, forcing it to stop at a "in-the-middle-of-nowhere" way station called Minnie's Haberdashery. That would be Chris Mannix (Goggins), caught wandering in the snow, who claims to be the new Sheriff of Red Rock. What he's doing in the middle of a blizzard in the highlands of Wyoming does look a little suspicious. Mannix was a Southern soldier in the Civil War, and that sets up a splintering dynamic on the coach. The Hangman and Major Warren fought for the North, so there's immediate animosity that is constantly brought up throughout the movie and allowed to simmer before it is acted on.

But, like the lousy coffee the coach-passengers find at Minnie's, it's been on the boil a little too long. Ten minutes can't go by without the War between the States being brought up, and then add four other characters to the mix—played by Bruce Dern, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, and Demián Bichir (as Bob)—and it turns into a four-walled circle jerk in which precious little is discussed besides The War and "what are YOU doing here?" Those long dialogues are then snapped by gunfire, so much of which happens inside Minnie's four walls it's amazing that anyone could even hear what anyone's saying after so many indoor concussive sound-waves.

It's tedious, eventually. Tedious to the point where Tarantino must toss in a mystery that he plays out like a Hercule Poirot "j'accuse" monologue, a voice-over narration (voiced by Tarantino himself) that tries to bridge some gaps in the narrative—it's eight people in a room by this point, so why is he incapable of showing it?—and a flashback sequence to throw in some fore-shadowing after he has made the "Big Surprise" that he telegraphs seconds before he unleashes it. It's confusing, clumsy and more than a bit ham-fisted, as if he shot the sequences, but couldn't figure out where it would go in the movie until he had to, by means of explanation.

You wonder exactly what might have happened to the guy, who despite his promise, wasted so much of his time on hack-work that merely sought to recreate the junk he used to like (in his painful DGA interview with Christopher Nolan, he reveals that the inspiration for The Hateful Eight was television westerns—what would happen if you tossed together the suspicious-acting guest-stars that would show up and disappear every week? That may be the shortest reach for any film-maker who ever did more than just turn on a camera and let it run).

It's disappointing. And tedious. Not entertaining, and, in fact, maddening. This is Tarantino running on fumes and desperately trying to make a 70 MM silk purse out of a sow's ear. Perhaps it's time to walk away and not encourage him anymore. He's an abject lesson in what can happen to a director who becomes a media darling to the point where he thinks he pisses perfume. It's time to point out that the Emperor has no clothes, and that Quentin Tarantino has nothing to say.

I left The Hateful Eight wondering whether Quentin Tarantino is/was a talented filmmaker or the gibbering little troll with a knife in Don't Look Now.

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