Currently at the Curzon Soho, London

I saw this earlier today at the Curzon Soho in London - it seems to have just gone on general release over here, surprisingly after coming out on DVD in the US. Given that it's in 4:3 you don't really gain much from seeing it in a cinema. The showing I attended had a couple of dozen people in attendance, none of whom walked out, and so judging by the pound-dollar exchange rate this showing probably covered the film's entire budget.

It strikes me as one of those films I'll remember although not particularly cherish. So much of it just seemed arbitrary, as if the writer had come up with an idea for a setting and a couple of themes but had no real idea how to make them gel together. The character side of things felt like an imitation of Robert Altman and the computery aspects were just window-dressing, really. The performances on the other hand were generally very good, spec' the chap who played Papageorgiou, and the bird-like chess professional. I think the fundamental problem is that the writer wasn't a fan of chess or computers and he wasn't alive in 1980 and had nothing much to say.

In my opinion there's potential for a good philosophical film about AI research at the dawn of the computer age; or a relationship drama that examines the kind of people who seem to have devoted their lives to algorithms, or even a gonzo look at convention culture in the late 1970s, or even on a simple level a kind of Almost Famous for nerds. But this isn't any of those things.

It had to be said that chess as a metaphor for the human condition is not a new idea, e.g. Chess, the musical by the blokes from Abba, which no-one would ever argue is high art. And the idea of a computer developing a soul is not a new idea either. Really, the short sequence where the terminal seems to come to life felt as if it had been edited in from a much better, creepier film.