There are lots of war movies that seem to glorify war. From Saving Private Ryan to 300 most movies that deal with a war have good guys and bad guys. The films make it very clear that "these guys" must beat "those guys" or the world, as we know it, which is good and pure, will certainly fail. Another way war movies glorify war is by creating a hero admits the fighting and killing. This character is always ultra heroic, good looking and never thinks twice about killing the bad guys. He is usually the ultimate hero and no matter how many bullets are shot at him or spears thrown at him he will always survive.
War Game is not like these typical movies depicting war for a few reasons. The first reason is because the war that it is showing is not a typical war. It's not a war between bad and good and it's only showing one side of the war. Because nuclear war is not a typical war between one side and another it is not shown in a typical narrative style. This is the strength and weakness of the film. It is the strength because it is a unique way to approach a non-typical style of war and its weakness because some of the scenes seem extremely fictional (i.e. the boys talking about how they don't want to be anything when they grow up). The film also shows that when it comes to nuclear war there is no good or bad because it's bad. It's bad both for the country that the bomb is dropped on and also for the country that drops the bomb because of what it does to completely innocent people.
Overall War Game is a good attempt to show a very difficult subject and in the end it shows that war, especially nuclear is no game.
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Kudos to director Peter Watkins for creating such a film as War Game, and for giving it that title. The film symbolizes - to me, at least - a brave attempt at showing all of the effects, the before, middle, and after, of such a terrible weapon. Especially interesting to me were the segments in which the camera was right in the middle of the action with those people who were being attacked by the Bomb; and how that was documented so closely even though I wonder if anyone could really recall clearly, sanely, what happened during such an attack (if they survived). Another aspect that was surprising and occassionally refreshing was how War Games chose to the good and the awful, although I think that the interviews were unnecessary. The images spoke for themselves.
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