Cloak & Dagger

A young boy, with a penchant for spy thrillers and video games, finds himself in the middle of real espionage when he’s relentlessly pursued by spies after he comes into possession of a video game cartridge containing top-secret government info.

Matt
Rating 7 out of 10

You know the movie’s old school when the trailer says “Check your local newspaper for locations.”

While “Cloak & Dagger” definitely has some throw-back charm for me, it’s actually a really good movie for kids that I still enjoy as an adult. There are actually guns in a family movie! Bad guys kill people! People die! The hero smokes cigarettes! It’s crazy!

Seriously, though, this movie probably couldn’t be made today, at least not a lot of it, because it would be too violent by today’s standards. But I think it’s what makes the movie feel more real. The boy in the movie, played by Henry Thomas of “E.T.” fame, gets lost in fantasy with an imaginary secret agent who looks just like his dad (who he never sees). The imagination of the secret agent world is in contrast to a very real spy drama around him, which is full of violence.

There are some really evil bad guys and some old-school nostalgia in this film – like Atari cartridges. If you’re a child of the 80s and you have kids 10 and up, it’s definitely worth a revisit to this fun spy movie.