Word: badham
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Among the most peripatetic of Congressmen, according to the report: ¶ Robert Badham, a California Republican, took nine trips in two years, seeing 29 countries, including Britain and Italy twice. ¶Frank Annunzio, an Illinois Democrat, visited Italy three times in two years, as well as eleven other countries. ¶Eldon Rudd, an Arizona Republican, made trips to the Far East twice, Latin America three times, Europe twice and an extended tour through Africa and the Middle East...
This is a defect it shares with whoever conceived Blue Thunder, which is by far the lesser of Badham's back-to-back releases. The film's nominal plot has Roy Scheider as a good Los Angeles police department chopper ace assigned to test what amounts to a flying gun platform. Once he discovers its illiberal potential, he must fight his way past Malcolm McDowell, an old neofascist enemy from his Viet Nam days now employed as a power-elite gunslinger. After that dogfight comes a showdown with a couple of Air Force jets...
...downtown Los Angeles is full of searing flashes, but it is actually as unaffecting as a round of Missile Command. The real estate takes a beating, but not a single innocent bystander is harmed as the aircraft careers around skyscrapers. That, is perhaps the least of the many implausibilities Badham hustles the audience past, cool-eyed, professional as any air-traffic controller with his eyes glued to the radarscope...
...memories of Saturday Night Fever suggest, Badham can be more than a high-tech hardware merchant. The first portions of WarGames are nearly irresistible. The reason that the mighty WOPR comes across as funny is that David, a bright high school lad (played by a very savvy young actor, Matthew Broderick, 21), accidentally makes contact with it while fooling around with his home computer. Boy and machine get to be friends, since they are both lonely and misunderstood. David is shy and sweet with his girlfriend (Ally Sheedy) but is wary of his parents and is a troublemaker in school...
...Badham gets a lot of distracting colored lights and video screens flashing madly while the lad works against a deadline to talk his electronic pal out of launching a preventive strike against the U.S.S.R. But, as with the end of Blue Thunder, there is more of technique than of conviction in this work. It may be that Badham is an exemplary case: yet another talented craftsman caught up in Hollywood's current belief that the big bucks are in the big-bang school of moviemaking. In War Games the search for a big, effects-laden finish does not render...