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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