Filmdoom: Wargames: The Dead Code (2008)

[[This review contains spoilers. Not like anyone's gonna watch this turkey anyway.]]

The Plot: A 25 year old high school student finds himself caught up in a thrill-ride of straight to video intrigue when a computer goes haywire and arrests his mom because he's good at video games. No, really.

The Good: I drank several beers while watching this thing and then I fell asleep in the middle of it, waking up just in time to watch the last 5 minutes.

Claudia Black of Farscape and Stargate SG-1 totally does the voice of R.I.P.L.E.Y., the crazy computer. And she uses and americanish accent.


The Bland: Everything. The actors, the acting, the effects, the sets, the colors, the action. If unsweetened oatmeal were a movie, it would be this movie. The most interesting characters in the movie were R.I.P.L.E.Y. and JOSHUA, who was played by Colm Feore, the guy who played the evil guy in Storm of the Century.



The Ugly: The movie starts with R.I.P.L.E.Y. blowing up some terrorists with a missile shot from a drone plane. It is then explained to us that R.I.P.L.E.Y. found them because the terrorists came across some "hidden", "hard to find" internet gambling site and made a shit ton of money off of it (paid by the government) because they were really good at the game. Somehow that equals terrorist. Because apparently the game (called RIPLEY, how's that for clever?) is all about bioterrorism, therefore the only people who could possibly get a high score are bioterrorists. Get it? Good.


In the next scene, our hero (I forget his name, so let's call him Cutting Edge 3, because he starred in the TV movie, The Cutting Edge 3: Chasing the Dream) Cutting Edge 3 is strapped for cash because he wants to go on a school trip to Canada with the chess team that he is not actually a member of so that he can impress a girl who is really ugly when she cries and already obviously wants to ride him like a dromedary camel. Anyway, his annoying loud mouthed movie cliche' friend tells him about RIPLEY the game, which was obviously not all that hidden or hard to find. Still with me? I'm sorry. Okay, so Cutting Edge 3 plays the game, which consists of him flying a missile around a city and using chemical weapons trying to kill 100,000 people before the time limit runs out so he can win money.


It's funny how the worse a movie is, the more I have to explain the plot because it's so nonsensical, if you explain one thing, you have to explain ten other things to try and help the first thing make sense. I could keep going, but it's not going to help any. What is the point of this video game? No fucking clue.

The first thing the government does is arrest Cutting Edge 3's mom. Because she works at a chemical plant making mouthwash. The second thing the government does is arrest Cutting Edge 3's cliche' friend at the airport before they leave for Canada. At any point they could have arrested Cutting Edge 3, but for some reason they chose to arrest everyone else he knew that had never actually played the video game that led to them thinking he's a terrorist in the first place. Makes total sense.

Cutting Edge 3's mom gets so sick she has to be put in the hospital for reasons that are never given and government agents take cliche' best friend to the top floor of a parking garage which is furnished with a table, chairs and lights to interrogate him. At one point the agent leaves the room, blatantly dropping his jacket in front of cliche' friend, in the most obvious trap ever. So of course cliche' grabs the agent's phone out of his jacket and sends a text to Cutting Edge 3, who is at the airport in Canada. The agent comes back in, immediately grabs the phone, checks the outgoing texts and says, "Thank you!" with a big smile on his face. Because somehow the agents had no idea where Cutting Edge 3 was, but now they know exactly where to find him because cliche' texted him something like, "Run!". My brain hurts.

The rest of the movie is Cutting Edge 3 and Ugly When She Cries running away from The Government as uninterestingly as possible. Until...

They run into Professor Falken! Except it's just some random old guy that isn't even British and looks exactly nothing like Professor Falken. And he had exactly zero way of knowing:

• (a) that Cutting Edge 3 was in trouble
• (b) that Ugly When She Cries wanted Cutting Edge 3's knob and would end up being on the run with him
• (c) that he would be able to meet them at the airport in Canada
• (d) that Cutting Edge 3 was not in fact a terrorist in the first place.

Shortly after Cutting Edge 3 and Ugly When She Cries start running and meet Fake Professor Falken, I fell asleep because it was really, really stupid and boring.

By the way, the movie never explains what R.I.P.L.E.Y. stands for.

The End: When I woke up it was right at the end where they get JOSHUA to have a chat with R.I.P.L.E.Y. Predictably, JOSHUA plays a bunch of tic-tac-toe and checkers and global thermonuclear war with R.I.P.L.E.Y. until she says, "Strange game. The only winning move is not to play." Seriously. They couldn't even manage to write a new line for that. And then Cutting Edge 3 asks JOSHUA if he would really have blown up the world and JOSHUA says, and I quote, "Yes, the human race is finished. That was humor. Ha. Ha. Ha." ...

Verdict: The only winning move is not to watch.