When a battered Atari cartridge turns up at the precinct labeled “Top Secret — Project Cloak & Dagger,” veteran detective Jared “Ballistic” Jackson and partner Jonathan “Sourdough” Manno are called in to decode it. What starts as a simple nostalgia trip soon spirals into a full-blown Cold-War mystery — complete with imaginary operatives, vanishing fathers, and a kid convinced he’s living inside a spy movie.

As they dissect Cloak & Dagger’s strange blend of childhood fantasy and government paranoia, Jared suspects the film is really an allegory about the Reagan-era arms race and latchkey loneliness. Sourdough, however, is convinced it’s about trust — between father and son, agent and double agent, gamer and game. Their investigation leads from a dusty VHS rental case to a shadowy ar ...