The Gamechangers

2015 "The tale of one of the most controversial video games of all time."
6.3| 1h30m| en| More Info
Released: 15 September 2015 Released
Producted By: BBC Film
Country: United Kingdom
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Synopsis

The struggle of Houser's legal feud against American lawyer Jack Thompson, over the morality of the "Grand Theft Auto" video game series.

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Reviews

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.
PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.
Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.
Roy Hart If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.
adonis98-743-186503 The struggle of Houser's legal feud against American lawyer Jack Thompson, over the morality of the Grand Theft Auto video game series. The Gamechangers is not that good of a film or a tv film but also not that good of a documentary plus the whole controversy surrounding 'GTA' was a pretty damn outrageous to say the least. The acting was not that very good except the late Bill Paxton who was great as the righteous lawyer and then Daniel Radcliffe? who was honestly kind of trying way too hard to play this type of role. Disappointing Documentary. (3/10)
siderite I liked that the movie did not go too hard one way or the other. It is obviously biased towards the game company, but not too much. Bill Paxton makes a great righteous lawyer trying to impose his own moral values on the world and Daniel Radcliffe plays well a Steve Jobish kind of company CEO that drives everyone insane, but also toward doing good work. However, the lack of support from the real protagonists and the desire to make the story more dramatic than it actually was hurt the film.I was always outraged by the hypocrisy that surrounded GTA. The film is trying to put the violence and the sex in the game in the same boat, but it actually wasn't like that at all. Nobody said anything about the violence in the game (or the fact that, for example, you can fly a plane into a building), but there was huge outrage about the Hot Coffee mod who enabled previously disabled sex scenes. Hillary jumped immediately on the righteous wagon because of the sex. No wonder Bill left her.I think that the biggest problem of the film was that it didn't know what it was. For a drama it was a bit lackluster and under budget, considering the many stories surrounding the GTA franchise in general. Also, I have worked for people like Radcliffe's character, people that can hug you one day and fire you another, based only on their personal mood. It's not cool. The developers themselves and their side of the story are completely missing from the film.For a documentary it was inaccurate, changing event order and amassing many of them in an unrealistic time interval. Even my wife, who is unaware of the reality of the game, noticed that some things seemed to happen in weeks and other in years, yet somehow at the same time.Bottom line: I liked watching it and I suppose I would have not wanted to miss it, but I can't recommend it for anything else other than good acting.
joedouglashodgson Critics, even Rockstar themselves, have been very negative of the recent release (15th September 2015) of The Gamechangers. It has been slated for being poorly acted or not accurate to the real-life events or even just plain bad; but what these opinionated reviews are missing is the entire pragmatic of the film.The Gamechangers clearly states, without sounding like one of lawyers in the film, that the scenes shown have been altered for dramatic effect (or words to that effect) thus any point on how realistic the film really was is entirely out of the question, all that matters is that the events happened. Just happened. And what this film really did was present both sides of the argument in, for possibly the first time in the film industry, a balanced manner. In my personal opinion the film does not romanticise any aspect of the lives of each side of the GTA debate, which can be generalised to the entire argument of violent video games, and even if, as a viewer, the viewer feels they liked or were made to associate more with a certain type of character, or one side of the argument, more then they must ask themselves if a character on the opposing side could not be empathised with by a different type of person. In film, everyone feels a connection with a certain type of character and those characters vary. Some prefer the villain to the hero, the Joker to Batman and so on. Yet as the film finishes, which ever character you empathise with the most you cannot but feel as thought you are stuck in two minds, debating with yourself, about who really is the most respectable, honourable or even moral character in this tale. The plain exclamation that --- remains on death row seems to provide a led weight on the conscious if you associate more with the GTA team or, conversely, the amount of money and respect Rockstar still gain, as is stated, provides a balancer for those who associate with the moral movement against violent video games for developing minds. Either way both sides have characters presented as mad, immoral and ugly whilst also portraying aspects of good, revolution and development.In essence, this film has provided a non-biased ending, which the viewer can take away not a sense of excitement or pleasure from their film but rather leave in a contemplative and quizzical state. And that is rare for modern film. This picture has, as is the aim of many of the characters, broken down barriers and revolutionised real-life based film. But the question after you have balanced your moral scale and decided on a place to stand is why have films documenting real events not provided as bleak and factual interpretation as this one previously? Real-life dramas should let us make up our own minds. And I believe this film has taken the first step in letting us do so.
Prismark10 I have been playing arcade games since the late 1970s. Computer games since the Home Computer revolution of the early 1980s and I bought a copy of GTA III for the Playstation 2. Despite this I do not consider myself as a gamer. However I am known to show my skills off to my kids every now and then to let them know that their old dad has a trick or two up his sleeve when it comes to Mortal Kombat or Virtua Fighter.What struck me about GTA III was the expansive almost free flowing game-play. You had missions to complete but you could just wander off and do something else. For the first time I felt video-games had made that leap forward more than the hype from console manufacturers going on about Emotion chips.People might be surprised to discover that GTA is actually British created by two brothers, Sam and Dan Houser who in this BBC film are based in New York. Daniel Radcliffe plays Sam Houser, the Don Simpson obsessed visionary who wants to take gaming to the next level. He also comes across as brattish rather than a maverick.After a shooting incident the game's developer Rockstar lock horns with Jack Thompson (Bill Paxton) a God fearing conservative lawyer on a moral crusade against rap and video-games and its insidious effects on kids.Thompson struggles at court and is at risk of being disbarred but Rockstar rather ineptly or deliberately left hidden coding in one of their later version of GTA which brought them further trouble in the US courts.The problem with the film was it was too slight. The BBC received no cooperation from Rockstar who also enforced their trademark to not to allow them use the game footage. I think this was unwise of them.The film is based on true events but some scenes have been changed for dramatic effect. In short padded out to create tension where probably none existed.Like a lot of recent BBC one off films its noticeable that the 5 years licence fee is having an effect. Part of it just looked a little too cheap and low budget even though there was New York location shooting and it had a style of filming in parts to give it an immersive computer game setting.The makers hoped to create a buzz like the film The Social Network but here the battle about a moral crusader who uses grandstanding to destroy Rockstar felt overlong even at 90 minutes. Paxton also reminded me too much of the righteous character he played in his directorial debut, Frailty.