The Gamechangers review – Daniel Radcliffe's GTA drama was on autopilot

There is a new genre in Hollywood, the tech origin story, and it comes with its own version of goodies and baddies. Critically lauded films such as The Social Network, the Steve Jobs biopic Jobs, and even The Imitation Game, all present young, socially abrasive mavericks rallying against unimaginative naysayers who can’t dream of the future. It’s a potent formula, so you can see why the BBC is keen to tell the story behind the biggest British success story of modern tech, Grand Theft Auto, one of the best-selling franchises in the history of gaming.

The origins of Grand Theft Auto (GTA) can be found in Dundee where a bunch of newbie programmers created an expansive, but slightly shoddy, 2D game in which players drive around a city completing crime missions. The Gamechangers skips all that, beginning when the franchise has been bought by Rockstar Games and 1m copies of GTA’s fourth incarnation, Vice City, have already been sold. The game’s production is now being run out of New York by English brothers Sam and Dan Houser.

The BBC’s feature-length show centres around battles between Rockstar and Jack Thompson, a conservative Christian lawyer who styles himself on Batman. Thompson tries to sue Rockstar, first because of the game’s potentially violent influence on children and later because of a sex scene hidden in the game’s code. What follows is a well-paced pitter-patter of courtroom battles, boardroom struggles and personal anguish.

There was plenty of ambition to make this a big-budget, US-style boardroom tech story, with some flashy graphics and an impressive early scene in which a copycat GTA-style police killing is shot in the style of the game. Big-name actors Daniel Radcliffe and Bill Paxton play the two main adversaries: Paxton’s moral crusader with anger management issues is particularly convincing.

It’s impossible not to compare The Gamechangers’ desire to ape one genre of Hollywood movies, with Rockstar’s aim to ape another one: the violent action film. One of the most revolutionary things about GTA is that it shows rather than tells: the story is told through gameplay and dialogue rather than the traditional expositional cut scenes, giving it an immersive film-like quality. Unfortunately, those games feel more genuine than this rather stilted take on how they were made.

The script feels underdeveloped – perhaps writers were constrained by the limited source material and the refusal of Rockstar to cooperate in making the show – but most of the characters talk in unnatural soundbites. In the opening minutes, it feels as if people are reading their character descriptions aloud: “Here she is, the successful wife” and “Come on little brother, you are the clever funny one.”

The portrayal of the game itself also falls short. Anything remotely technical is presented in a shoddy, unrealistic style, which, in the age of super-accurate technology TV shows such as Mr Robot and Silicon Valley, seems very old-fashioned. The scene in which people are furiously tapping away at keyboards and then suddenly watching a fully rendered sex scene seems particularly ridiculous.
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But more problematic is that the show is disingenuous about what makes GTA revolutionary. The game is celebrated because of the detail in the landscapes and gameplay, and the nihilistic freedom with which players can hijack cars and murder prostitutes. None of that has much of a feelgood factor, so, instead, there is a pretence that the “gamechanging” thing about the new GTA is that the character can buy his own clothes and customise his style and that will affect his personality, something that has never really been at the centre of the game.