Unsurprisingly I’m into SF movies, and tech oriented stuff generally. I’ve long had an interest in hacking, have read many a book on the subject, watched films and occasionally dabbled though never broken into anything. The worst I got was writing password traps at uni to catch the unwary. There was a great book many years ago, that I devoured at uni and keep a print version on the shelf: Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. A book full of anecdotes of the early days of computers and the early hackers, people who created new code and established the frontiers of computing.

I’ve long had an idea in my head of what I like to call a cinematic hacker trilogy; three films that portray hacking and engage with its history. There’s been lots of films around hacking and some are good and some not so good but three seem to have stood out in my head:

• WarGames (1983)
• Sneakers (1992)
• Hackers (1995)

I love all three though I think the third is my favourite for capturing the sense of history, spicing it with the thrill of the game and a decent soundtrack. I’ve just rewatched WarGames and it holds up well though the acting and dialogue are clearly artifacts of the 80s. However the basic idea of stealing passwords written down remains true enough today, the weakest link is always people. Sneakers features Robert Redford and Ben Kingsley and is very smooth with a hacking group working semi legit but built by an old school hacker. There are other movies in the genre, good and bad, but this trio sits best in my head.