---
title: "The War Game: the reviews"
canonical: "https://film.one/film/the-war-game/reviews"
title_page: "https://film.one/film/the-war-game"
critics_score: 79
critics_reviews: 7
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# The War Game (1966): what the critics said

Critics' score 79 from 7 reviews: 6 positive, 1 mixed, 0 negative.

The critics are in broad agreement that Peter Watkins’s film still works. Most call it grim, horrifying and necessary, and the praise clusters on the same thing: the newsreel manner, the documentary techniques that make an imagined nuclear attack on Britain look like something a camera happened to record. Several single out the research behind it and the discipline of Watkins’s direction, and critics writing decades apart return to the same pictures of social collapse and ash-covered schoolchildren, which they find they cannot shake.

The spread is narrow, running from warm to unreserved, and nobody dismisses it. The one qualified voice is Slant Magazine, which rates it more modestly than the rest while still calling it an essential warning about war and the officials who withhold the truth; the reservation is one of degree rather than kind. Some of the older notices are more concerned with the film’s history with the BBC than with the film itself, so the consensus rests on fewer detailed verdicts than the count suggests.

## Time Out — Tom Charity

Rating 5/5. 20 September 2012. 

Charity gives the film five stars, signaling an emphatically positive verdict. The available excerpt mentions Watkins’s proposals to the BBC but does not reveal what the review specifically singles out for praise.

[Read the review](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-war-game)

## The New York Times

Fi1m's normalised score 90/100 (inferred from the text). 14 September 1966. Festival review. 

The headline presents the film as one of two notable festival achievements. The inaccessible article text prevents identifying what the critic specifically praised.

[Read the review](https://www.nytimes.com/1966/09/14/archives/film-festival-two-tours-de-forcethe-war-game-lists-catalogue-of.html)

## Radio Times — Adrian Turner

Rating 4/5. 

Turner regards the film as powerful and nightmarish. He praises its documentary-style techniques for making the imagined nuclear aftermath feel immediate.

[Read the review](https://www.radiotimes.com/movie-guide/b-ms05jf/the-war-game/)

## Sight and Sound — Frances Morgan

Fi1m's normalised score 75/100 (inferred from the text). 

Morgan presents the film as a still-powerful and unsettling vision of nuclear catastrophe. She singles out its bleak portrayal of social collapse, which remains raw despite the passage of time.

[Read the review](http://old.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/reviews/specials/black-umbrella-and-the-war-game.php)

## Variety — Variety Staff

Fi1m's normalised score 75/100 (inferred from the text). 31 December 1965. 

The critic calls the film grim and horrific but says it deserves to be shown as widely as possible. They praise Watkins’s imaginative direction, grounded in considerable research.

[Read the review](https://variety.com/1965/film/reviews/the-war-game-1200420955/)

## The Guardian — Peter Lennon

Fi1m's normalised score 70/100 (inferred from the text). 

The framing is positive, suggesting Watkins is finally receiving overdue recognition. It singles out the film’s Oscar win and suppression by Downing Street, but gives no detailed critical verdict in the available text.

[Read the review](https://www.theguardian.com/film/movie/81455/war-game)

## Slant Magazine — Jeremiah Kipp

Rating 3/5. 25 July 2006. 

Kipp argues that The War Game remains an essential, forceful warning about war and the bureaucracy that withholds truth. He especially praises its unforgettable images of ash-covered schoolchildren and its newsreel-like presentation.

[Read the review](https://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/the-war-game-culloden/)

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Our review: https://film.one/film/the-war-game.md