From VARIETY, Film section

Production package, highlighted by David Hill's hands-around-the-throat editing pace and Rob Lane's tense synth score, pushes pic into the docu field's commercial penthouse.

"I only want to know two things in this life. Who killed JFK and did IBM cheat?"
Paul Murphy

From the producers of 'Bowling for Columbine' comes an extraordinary feature documentary; a high tech corporate conspiracy thriller set in the weird world of chess.



Set amidst New York's towering Corporate HQ's in a ultra high tech world of collapsed Enrons, GAME OVER is a film that defines an era.

In May 1997 Garry Kasparov, the greatest chess player the world has ever seen, played Deep Blue - a hulking one and a half ton IBM supercomputer. Before ranks of the world media this was a chess tournament and scientific experiment that would stun the world.

Immediately after the tournament, bleary eyed and exhausted, Kasparov stormed into the final press conference and, under the glare of the world's media, accused IBM of cheating, alleging they had tampered with the machine during play.

Within 24 hours of Deep Blue's victory IBM's share price rose by some 2.5%, adding over $2Billion to the company's value. The story appeared on almost every front page of every newspaper across the globe. The epic struggle of Man vs Machine was over. Machines and The Corporation had won.

Directed by multi-award winning filmmaker Vikram Jayanti ( 'James Elroy's Feast of Death' and 'The Man Who Bought Mustique'), GAME OVER takes us on a gripping cinematic odyssey into the paranoid mindscape of a legendary chess genius, as we slowly unravel the truth behind one of the most baffling corporate conspiracies of the 20th Century.

From VARIETY, Film section

Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine

By ROBERT KOEHLER

Vikram Jayanti's crackling "Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine" plays on the psychology and paranoia of grandmaster chess in chronicling the 1997 match between Russian world champ Garry Kasparov and IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer. Though it never disguises its sympathies for Kasparov and contempt for a powerful corporation's machinations, docu is finally a speculation on the limits of the human mind and how truth can never be fully known. High drama will lead to strong international fest and B.O. interest, with many ancillary games to follow.

Non-chess fans receive a compact backgrounder on Kasparov (first seen painfully revisiting the Gotham site of the match) and his triumphant career, including his dark-horse 1984 win over Anatoly Karpov, which seemed to presage changes to come in the USSR The IBM camp is repped by Deep Blue developers Murray Campbell and Feng Hsuing-Tsu, as well as grandmaster Joel Benjamin, hired by the company to create gaming scenarios for Deep Blue to play against Kasparov.

The first contest in 1996 was by all accounts a convivial affair designed as a creative science experiment, which Kasparov won easily. In retrospect, it's easy to sense overconfidence contributed to his undoing in the '97 rematch, but few could have foreseen the extent to which the machine was to advance in a year, or how the game would turn ugly and paranoid.

Jayanti's film cleverly -- if controversially -- lays out a scenario that has less to do with the advance of computer science and more to do with a nasty mix of bruised egos and corporate arrogance run amok.Pacing of each game builds to an intense pulse as Kasparov first wins, and then is so soundly defeated in game two that it seems to weaken him psychologically. As Kasparov views it, Deep Blue's winning moves transcended a machine's limits, raising the specter of human intervention. The pic runs with the accusation, spicing it with visuals of other famous chess-playing "machines" that turned out to be fronts for human players.

Though no proof of the charges is uncovered (and Benjamin, Campbell and Feng are mum on the subject), others, such as reporter Jeff Kisselhof, suggest IBM wanted to defeat Kasparov at all costs as means to prove company's computer supremacy. Pic notes more than once that IBM stock shot up 15% immediately after Kasparov retired from the match.

Coda plays an unsettling note, as IBM is seen dismantling Deep Blue after its victory, as if it existed solely to demoralize the champ, and Kasparov stumbles through a horrific defeat to his old nemesis, Karpov.

Production package, highlighted by David Hill's hands-around-the-throat editing pace and Rob Lane's tense synth score, pushes pic into the docu field's commercial penthouse.