Vlad Bunoan

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Rematch

Ralph Revelar Sarza

<div><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1753080865829REMATCH_VERTICAL (NEWSLETTER).jpg" style="width:950px" class="fr-fic fr-dib"/>Photo provided by Lionsgate Play</div>I play chess. Poorly. I know the rules but still manage to lose my queen halfway through most games. My father taught me the game on this beat-up old board he’d had forever. The pieces were chipped, and one pawn was literally a coin. He’s the one who first told me about Garry Kasparov. The way he talked about him, it sounded like Kasparov had a mind wired differently from the rest of us. So, when Lionsgate Play sent over screeners for “Rematch,” a miniseries about Kasparov’s infamous 1997 match against IBM’s Deep Blue, I knew I had to watch.I immediately thought of “The Queen’s Gambit,” that 2020 Netflix hit that made chess feel cinematic. That show focused on the emotional toll of brilliance: ambition, ego, isolation. “Rematch” hits a similar nerve, though from a different angle. This time, we’re not watching someone climb to the top. We’re watching someone try not to fall from it.At the center of the series is the 1997 showdown between Kasparov and Deep Blue. The match itself is well-known, but “Rematch” isn’t interested in rehashing facts. It digs into the pressure, the head games, and the unraveling. Kasparov is battling more than a computer. There’s tension in his team, pressure from the press, and a growing sense that IBM isn’t playing fair.Christian Cooke brings a wired intensity to Kasparov — impatient, sharp, unpredictable. His Soviet accent is strikingly believable, but more impressive is how he captures the pressure crushing down on the chess champion. Kasparov starts to lose faith: first in the process, then in his team, and finally in himself. Cooke’s performance avoids hero worship and instead shows a man built for domination trying to make sense of something that refuses to play by his rules. The show also gives space to the engineers and executives behind Deep Blue. Some are idealistic, some opportunistic. All are working inside a tech giant that doesn’t seem especially concerned with transparency. The lines are intentionally blurry. Was IBM playing fair? Maybe. Maybe not. But that stops mattering quickly, because winning is all that counts.Back in 1997, Deep Blue felt like an anomaly. A computer beating a world champion was bizarre, even eerie. In 2025, it looks more like prophecy. AI isn’t locked in labs or chessboards anymore. It’s writing emails, curating playlists, editing photos, and reshaping industries. The anxiety that haunted Kasparov is our background noise now. We live with the same gnawing question: what happens when something artificial outpaces the thing you’ve spent your life mastering? Even though you know how the showdown ends, the suspense still hits. That final game is agonizing. Kasparov freezes at the board, visibly rattled. He looks like he’s staring at a puzzle made with pieces that don’t belong. The defeat arrives with no clear explanation, no clean story, just silence.You’d think knowing how it ends would kill the tension. But “Rematch” gives you a reason to stay. Each episode builds on a steady hum of dread. Every move on the board carries weight. And like a good chess game, the momentum shifts without warning. The series isn’t flawless. Some scenes lean too hard into drama, and a few moments feel manufactured rather than observed. It’s less interested in historical precision than it is in psychological truth. But that’s the tradeoff. The show captures Kasparov’s obsessive relationship with chess, how it overtakes his focus, corrodes his personal ties, and isolates him. He lives in the game, and the game begins to close in.The camera often lingers on the board. Pieces slam down with a rhythm that feels more like tennis or badminton than chess. Even if you don’t know the rules, you feel the impact. The tension is physical. And it’s that intensity that makes it work for non-players too. There’s a sharper critique running under it all: a swipe at how tech positions itself as neutral while dismantling human expertise. At those who parade artificial intelligence as brilliance — or worse, believe using it makes them brilliant. People who confuse algorithmic output with real creativity. “Rematch” doesn’t spell that out, but it makes you feel it.For me, watching “Rematch” felt like coming full circle. My father introduced me to chess and to Kasparov. Back then, it all seemed so clear: talent, effort, mastery. But this story messes with that idea. It asks what happens when the world changes so fast that no one bothers to teach you the new rules.“Rematch” doesn’t give easy answers. It doesn’t wrap the story in redemption or closure. It just sits with the discomfort and lets it build. Whether or not you care about chess, this is essential viewing. Especially if you’ve ever felt erased by something pretending to know you.<div> </div>Ralph Revelar Sarza is an internationally published film critic. This review was originally published on the author’s website, <a href="https://www.walphs.com/2025/07/rematch-garry-kasparov-deep-blue-miniseries-review.html">WALPHS.com</a>. “Rematch” is streaming exclusively on Lionsgate Play in the Philippines.

In 'Rematch', the 1997 showdown between chess legend Garry Kasparov and IBM’s Deep Blue becomes a gripping portrait of pressure, ego, and technological reckoning. More psychological thriller than history lesson, the series captures a man unraveling in real time.

In ' Rematch' , the 1997 showdown between chess legend Garry Kasparov and IBM’s Deep Blue becomes a gripping portrait of pressure, ego, and technological reckoning. More psychological thriller than history lesson, the series captures a man unraveling in real time.

‘Rematch’ miniseries review: The king’s gambit

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‘Rematch’ miniseries review: The king’s gambit

Ralph Revelar Sarza

Published July 21, 2025 03:05 PM PHT

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