Customer Reviews

Game Over - Kasparov and the Machine

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

The movie had an interesting story to tell, but it had poor execution. The movie began with a narrator whispering about how IBM's stock rose 15% after the match because Deep Blue won. The whispering was just annoying. The movie had several pointless scenes. It had Kasparov going back to the rooms of his matches with computers and Karpov. Kasparov then described the room. It really did not help explain anything. Another point, they took you to where Deep Blue was now. Or rather, they took you to where one half of Deep Blue resided. It was two machines. One was at the Smithsonian and the other was at an IBM building. The camera took you to a locked clean room at the IBM building and showed you the locked computer. The operations guy did not have a key for the computer. The camera turned and showed a computer that was turned on. Trust me, I'm in IT. A large unix computer is boring. A turned off computer is even more boring. There are no moving parts. Dead space.

The good parts of the movie is that you have interviews with Kasparov and the IBM team. Kasparov is a charming guy. The IBM team are open and friendly. The movie shows both the bad and good sides of Kasparov, who displays dignity and his temper when he is being pushed around by IBM. The Deep Blue team are interesting, but the IBM company does not come off well. They milk the match for all advertising they could get. The movie keeps touting that it was a victory of machine intelligence over Man, but the point I get from it is, several computer geeks and chess grand masters after years of effort can put together a program that can barely beat a world champion, if they take every single psychological and technical advantage they can. The program is tuned to beat just one man. Since there is no rematch, the whole thing is pointless.

It is an interesting story, but the director choose to tell it in a very unskilled and obtrusive manner.

I had rented Game Over with high hopes. I enjoy chess and I'm in the computer industry. I figured how could I lose? Well, I did.

This is a 30 minute documentary crammed in 85 minutes. It's basic point is that Deep Blue made a strategic move in game two (of six) that Kasparov didn't think was possible for a machine. This move so distressed him that he resigned from a drawn position.

Then over the next four games he drove himself into such a tizzy that he made a simple blunder in Game 6 and lost. The computer hadn't even started computing when he resigned, it was still simply reading the moves out of a chess opening book.

On the other side, the IBM team decided that somehow having an enormous team of people design a computer that can beat a single man in a single six game tournament was the be all and end all of life. They come across as petty and foolish. In the end they complain that Kasparov had drained all the fun out of winning.

So I guess we all learned a lesson about sportsmanship, eh?

This movie's only redeeming feature is that it showed that Deep Blue didn't really beat Kasparov. He beat himself. If he hadn't resigned a drawn position in Game 2 the match would have ended in a draw. In addition if he had kept control of his emotions he probably would have won the whole thing.

Of course, the IBM team probably knew this when they refused a rematch and it was another instance where they came off looking like jerks.

I could have given this movie two stars if it weren't for the awful direction. The director cut so sporadically between shots that I was forced to turn my head away to avoid dizziness several times. That, along with the repetitive footage and melodramatic music made this a dreadful experience.

This DVD is a good rental. But there was a lot of things that bothered me in it. The journalist that said he was manhandled by IBM security and locked in a room and not allowed to leave until they questioned him about some Internet report. I found that very hard to believe and was wondering why he didnt file kidnapping charges and sue IBM. Its not everyday that a rich corporation kidnaps people, Im sure he would have got a huge settlement.

Kasparov throws temper tantrums and acts like a big baby when he loses. He accuses people of cheating, when the DVD although very one sided in favor of Kasparov shows no evidence that the Deep Blue Team cheated. Some computer programs play positional chess, I know that Hiarcs is a famous engine that does. Did they cheat? I dont know but I sure wasnt convinced that they did. With a computer engine that runs 50,000,000 positions a second, should we really be surprised when it makes a good move.

I wasnt in to Chess when the match took place in 97. I remember some things in the news but I couldnt recall who won the series of games. I was pulling for Kasparov to begin with, but by the end of the documentary I was glad he lost. He was made out to be some Flash Gordon "Savior of humanity" against the evil computer. But in reality he is a selfish, childish, arrogant, guy who happens to be great at Chess.

Why was they trying to act like this Deep Blue match made him lose to Kramnik and Karpov five years later? Does Kasparov get to blame every mistake he makes on this ancient history matchup with the computer? If we could all have such a scapegoat.

I think this movie is worth watching. It brings up some interesting questions about man and technology. Personally I dont think losing to a machine is any disgrace. Deep Blue was space age. If they created a robot who could K.O. the Heavyweight Champion of the world or outrun the Olympic sprinters would it really change anything? I dont think so, championships should always be people against people. But it sure is cool to take on the computers every now and then.

I went into this movie with high hopes. The subject of a grand chess master taking on a supercomputer is inherently fascinating, and could have been used as a jumping-off point to investigate a rich vein of interesting topics: what was the philosophical significance of this showdown between man and machine? What did it mean to the chess world, and to society at large? What defines a grand master-level chess player, and what goes through Kasparov's head as he contemplates his individual moves and overall strategies? How does this differ with the problem-solving programming that the computer is relying on? Just how do you program a computer to simulate the chess-playing style of a grand master? And how can a documentary movie creatively capture the essence of a complex chess match onscreen, making it real and involving for the average audience?

Sadly, "Kasparov and the Machine" does not address a single one of these questions -- especially not the last one. It is a plodding documentary that mostly consists of a film crew following Kasparov around the rather drab location where the match took place years earlier, as he reflects on his poor treatment by IBM. It also features some uninformative interviews with the computer programmers, and a lot of footage from a black and white silent movie about a chess machine from the 1800's that is terribly overused. A poorly substantiated conspiracy theory is advanced that IBM was somehow not playing fairly, and what might have been a good 30-minute PBS special is stretched out into a very thin feature length film.

This could have been a great, thought-provoking film exploring the ramifications of a man pitting his intellect against an artificial intelligence. It is tragic that the filmmakers missed such an opportunity to sweep us away with the complex consideration that this subject deserved.

Being an admitted chess addict, I was excited to see a documentary about the 1997 rematch between Garry Kasparov and IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer. I was hoping to see an in depth look at the match and a lot of what Kasparov had to say. Boy was I wrong and misguided by a mile. This documentary is a lot like many modern documentaries - there is a lot of flash but no real substance. After watching it, I am sad to say, I felt like I wasted my time. One of the most annoying aspects about the documentary is that it does not stay at one place for a decent period of time. It has the typical MTV type editing, where the camera shows different images and quick sound bites from people every five seconds. It is very sad that filmmaking has been watered down to the attention span of a 10-year old child.

I understand it is difficult to make a film about chess, but that does not mean one should make it flashy. 'Game Over' did have a couple of interesting ideas though. It brought up the idea whether computers can think like human beings or not; whether computers have advanced to a unique new level. This is what Kasparov thought after the match, but this film does not go deep enough with this idea. Also, this film tries to bring in a bizzare theory. It tries to imply the paranoid theory that a human being was making the moves along with the help of the computer. Kasparov had suspicions about this, but still to this day there is no evidence. Towards the end of the film, it tries to imply the bizzare idea that maybe Anatoly Karpov might have been the human being who was secretly making the moves with the aid of Deep Blue. Interesting to think about, but I don't know how plausable or realistic it is. I still would not recommend this movie though, not even for chess addicts.

There is a fascinating tale that can be told about Kasparov vs. Deep Blue. The filmakers had every opportunity to tell it - they had interviews with Kasparov and his team, interviews with members of the IBM team that designed and 'trained' Deep Blue, and interviews with famous chess analysts. In spite of all that, this film fails on all levels.

What could have been a spellbinding glimpse into the unfathomable mind of humanity's greatest chess player is instead a blatant anti-corporate propaganda piece, complete with the obligatory Enron reference.

Bizarre atonal music, jumpy hand-held defocused cameras, strange camera angles, freakish lighting, and multiple instances (dozens and dozens) of footage from an early silent movie about a charlatan who fakes a chess-playing robot - all these things are heaped one upon another to make viewing this film a painful experience.

Chess lovers will find nothing of worth here, and people looking for a human-interest piece will be turned off by the childish conspiracy-theory rants of most of the interviewees. It's one thing to film Kasparov floundering, grasping at conspiracy-theory straws to excuse his loss. This is interesting in the manner of a train wreck that you can't turn away from. It's quite another thing to collect a gaggle of Kasparov's sycophants, his business partners, and a few anti-corporate axe-grinders and allow them to all contribute to this fantasy ad nauseum. Kasparov's enablers are a sorry bunch and they make for a poor quality film.

It's well known that the volatile Kasparov is lacking in the maturity department. It could have made for a very interesting film to see how such a singular mind was demoralized and beaten down by the Deep Blue affair. Instead, the film provided nothing but hollow excuses and innuendo.

In the May 1997, Gary Kasparov, the reigning Chess World Champion and by the opinion of many, the greatest chess player ever played Deep Blue, an IMB Supercomputer. At its best scenes, the film is an entertaining look at the never ending competition of human intellect against artificial. The greatest player on Earth does not like and does not know how to lose, and his account of the match and its result is quite bitter. He can't believe that the computer program, the combination of 0s and 1s may appear to think like a human. It was sad and nostalgic for me to see Gary like that. I remember him back in 1985, 22 years old World Champion after his victorious match with Anatoly Karpov. In his (and former mine) country millions of people that knew nothing or next to nothing about ancient game of chess (All I know that the first move e2 - e4 will not bring me any problems, at least for a little while) passionately wished him to win. Gary was not just a brilliant chess genius, a wonder-boy - he was also a symbol of hope, of changes not only in the chess politics but in the life of the whole country that was ready for changes.

2.5/5

The producer of this movie took a great subject and created a documentary with a horrible sound track and constant anoying "scary movie" type effects. This movie would be a great study for people wanting to learn how not to make films. It's almost like it was produced by someone who just got movie editing software for the first time and was going overboard trying to see what they could do. The most enjoyable clips in the movie were scenes taken from new casts and 3rd party sources. Someone could make this move 100% better by just editing out the sound effects and music. A little Bach or Mozart could be inserted over the existing sound track to make the film more watchable. The story of the match can stand on its own and doesn't need cheap tricks to manipulate the audience into seeing the chess match from Kasparov's point of view (a nightmare).

Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine examines the infamous 1997 rematch between then world-champion Gary Kasparov and IBM's chess supercomputer, Deep Blue. Kasparov had defeated an earlier incarnation of Deep Blue the previous year, but in 1997 the new and improved computer defeated him in a six-game match: two wins to one with three draws.

Speculation was rampant that IBM had rigged the match by allowing a human player to override the computer on certain key moves. As evidence, conspiracy theorists pointed to moves wherein Kasparov offered the sacrifice of a pawn, and the computer turned it down. Pawn sacrifices, which strong players often use to garner positional advantages or to gain initiative, were long considered too abstract for a computer to understand. A machine, many argued, could not possibly see far enough ahead to truly appreciate the subtle positional edge that a good sacrifice can provide. Therefore, a human must have been helping the computer out. Who could expect a human player, even one as brilliant as Kasparov, to defeat the combination of human and computer?

The film makes frequent reference to "The Turk", a chess-playing automaton that was famous in the 18th century. Travelling around Europe, it impressed monarchs and noblemen with its astonishing ability. The Turk was a hoax; a human player, concealed beneath the machine, operated the arms and made the moves himself. Dramatizations of the historical episode, borrowed from black and white films, appear frequently throughout Game Over (in fact they constitute something of a thematic refrain). The analogy is obvious, and certainly compelling. Could Deep Blue have been a modern day Turk, an elaborate fraud perpetrated by IBM to garner publicity? It's hard not to be intrigued by the question, but unfortunately, the intrigue ends there. "Game Over" does not present a single shred of evidence to support its hypothesis. Instead, it relies esclusively (and I do mean exclusively) on innuendo.

Over and over, a shaky camera presents us with blurred visuals while a hushed voice wonders aloud about the supposedly "un-computer-like" moves that Deep Blue made during the match. One interviewee after another questions the machine's strangely profound understanding of the game. The film ends with a gradual interior tracking shot of the warehouse in which the de-commisioned supercomputer now resides (it's hard not think of the final shot from Raiders of the Lost Ark), while the narrator laments that the truth may never be known. All this is very mysterious, yes, but it's also utterly unconvincing.

It wasn't so long ago that otherwise rational people proclaimed with certainty that no computer would ever beat a human world champion. Chess, they said, is too full of pattern-recognition, of strategy and subtlety, for a computer to grasp in full. How could any person with even a basic knowledge of chess and computer science have legitimately believed this? While the number of possible positions in chess is astronomical, it is still finite, and a sufficiently powerful computer should, in theory, be able to "solve" the game (that is, determine the ideal move for every position). Even today, no computer is capable of this. But as processors grew more and more powerful, it was inevitable that they would come close enough to their lofty goal that they would surpass the limits of human chess ability. From then on, the world champion would never again be a human.

Should it really surprise us that an exceptionally powerful computer (which, at the time, Deep Blue was) would be able to look far enough ahead to see that a small material gain now would cost it dearly later on? "Game Over" sustains itself on nothing more than baseless insinuations about the IBM programming team. What is most offensive about this is the way that the programmers are demonized for crushing humanity's hopes of perpetual chess supremacy. Should it not be viewed as an equally great triumph of human ingenuity that a team of computer scientists was able to create a machine more skilled even than Kasparov, a genius who had devoted his life to the study of chess?

Compounding the absurdity is the fact that a year before this film was released, world champion Vladimir Kramnik drew an eight-game match against the chess program Fritz, which can be purchased for a small sum at your local Best Buy and installed on your home computer. One wonders if the producers of Game Over were aware of this.

A driveling film that should've had 2/3rds of it edited out.

The usual moronic style: Shaky cameras, five second soundbites from a whirlwind of talking heads, "spooky" music, anti-corporatist agitprop, conspiracy theorizing...

Hey, here's a conspiracy theory: Some fool we're supposed to take seriously states that IBM made "billions" out of the match. Maybe they gave the neurotic Kasparov a few million to lose?

Hey, players: read Pandolfini's book on the match. I'm not a great fan of Mr. P, but it's a move-by-move Chernev-style annotation of the six games. Quite interesting and taught me, at least, a bit more about the game.

Anyway, K lost the match, and serve him right. Deep Blue didn't win it.

Karpov would've crushed DB: Play the board, not the man/machine!