Another computer-age thriller, though a pretty exciting one about a teenage computer freak who accidentally plugs into America's nuclear defence system and finds the computer playing a war game with him that may very well be for real. Though you may not understand the ending, you'll appreciate the tension that leads up to it, as the boy and his girlfriend (he's won her over by programming the school computer to give her an A in biology instead of an F) fight desperately to a) convince the authorities and b) find the thought-dead scientist who may be able to stop it all. Matthew Broderick, Dabney Coleman, John Wood and Ally Sheedy are convincingly distraught: but then it's only a game. Or is it? From January 1979 to June 1980, some 147 such alerts had their grim scenarios played out in earnest before America and Russia pulled back from the brink. It was - and still is - a dangerous age.

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