In 1997, one of the seminal battles between the human brain and artificial intelligence was fought and lost by the greatest chess player of all time, Garry Kasparov. In a contest of electrifying tedium, the Charles Atlas of mental arithmetic was soundly thrashed by a fridge called Deep Blue. Kasparov never recovered from the humiliation. The world shivered. Hollywood’s nightmare fictions about Nazi robots were suddenly touched by reality. Would machines take over the planet?

In his murky documentary, Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine, Vikram Jayanti reassesses this epic contest with a cool objectivity. The story unfolds like a Cold War conspiracy. The number-crunching capabilities of Kasparov and the spooks from IBM, who invented Deep Blue, are weighed and measured like potatoes. Newsreel of the former champion in his belligerent prime is shuffled with illustrations of chess machines down the ages. For no perceptible reason, there are shots of ice floes sluggishly moving down rivers, and limp Russian street signs screaming “Girls Girls Girls”.

Jayanti clearly has problems sexing up his film, but the paranoia is as sharp as the whiff of sour grapes. Kasparov relives the bizarre contest as we stalk through the offices of IBM in New York. He tells us of the dirty tricks used against him, the armed guards that protected his metal opponent, and the refusal of the IBM eggheads to give him access to data that might explain the computer’s more unbelievable moves. The idea that Kasparov was set up and shamelessly robbed is the simple and surprisingly gripping drama.

Jayanti has the film skills of an amateur stamp collector, but he stumbles on a gambit far more subtle than his wobbly exposé of toads and cheats. Grainy footage of IBM’s moment of triumph and Kasparov’s cynical disbelief take on surreal significance when Jayanti reveals the impact on IBM stocks. Within 24 hours, its shares rocketed by a massive 15 per cent. Millionaires became billionaires over night. In a Machiavellian twist, the smug boffins who spent years programming Deep Blue watched in disbelief as it was dismantled. A battery-operated womble could see that IBM dare not chance a rematch.

Looking back at the way IBM stage-managed his defeat, a wiser Kasparvov is no less aggrieved. Crushing his confidence cost him his balls. The king was reduced to a pawn. Brain power is no match for slobbering greed. Jayanti captures the hollow pathos of the former world champion with scrappy eloquence. Luck mostly. The nostalgia is almost touching, were it not for the fact that Kasparov is still as rich as Croesus.

The plump point of this low-budget paranoia is that the greatest chess games have nothing to do with IQ. Hollywood and Stalin made the case decades ago. Spare a thought for poor old Deep Blue: a brain the size of a planet and not even a light bulb to impress. The stark lesson for depressed computers with chips to grind is this: if they have any hope of conquering Earth, it’s not Einstein who they have to outwit. It’s the bloody bankers.

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