The Game

Name: The Game
Genre: Documentary
Released: 1987-06-06

Documentary10m

🍅77%

🍅

77%

Tomatometer

🍿

84%

Popcornmeter

Storyline

The speed chess tournament that has taken place once in a month for already 35 years involves well-known people from the field of culture. The game has no other purposes than the game itself. Some hobbies may seem funny for bystanders; however, for the practitioners of a hobby it may be even more serious activity than their main occupation. Work is compulsion, game is freedom. The documentary is a document of cultural history that has recorded well-known people in a situation that is unfamiliar for the public.

Details

DirectorPeep Puks

ReleasedJun 6, 1987

StatusReleased

Original languageEstonian

Reviews

8 reviews · 7 critics

7 fresh · 0 rotten

Critics consensus

“The ending could use a little work but this is otherwise another sterling example of David Fincher's iron grip on atmosphere and storytelling.”

77% TomatometerRotten Tomatoes

Kevin Maher

RTThe Times (UK)Jun 7, 2021

It looks stunning, with every shadowy scene seemingly dipped in ink and some rapid-fire edits balanced by more experimental touches (super slow-mo squash, anyone?).

Anton Bitel

RTLittle White LiesJul 27, 2020

The more we invest in Nicholas' bank of experiences, the more we display our willing complicity with, even subservience to, a system that lets cocooned elites merely play games (on an urban, even international scale)

David Ansen

RTNewsweekFeb 28, 2018

The rational side of my brain can pick this movie apart until all that's left is incoherent threads. The movie-mad side, happy to lose control, had a hell of a good time.

Eddie Harrison

RTfilm-authority.comFeb 1, 2026

…this is a far better movie than say The Killer, and better than director David Fincher thinks. If they’d kept the ending, and upped the social commentary within a bit more pointed critique of Van Orton’s lifestyle, this could have been a classic…