The Coldest Game

But give this a chance. I once played chess against an internationally respected player when when we were both under the influence and I played the game of my life - I won at about 2:30 in the morning and he replayed every move of the game to show me where he went wrong.

Freeing up the mind might seem impossible to many people, but for imagination to take flight, don't dismiss the idea of letting a drink take you to realms you haven't thought of.

I'm not advocating alcoholism, but I am saying this film shows that puritanism can be extremely boring and restrict what is good for everyone.

Love chess, love different thinking - take a chance on this movie making you think differently.

This is a captivating tale of the behind the scenes of a political chess match. Who would have thought there was so much going on behind a seemingly innocent series of chess games! It is a captivating story, with great acting as well. I really enjoyed it.

I watched this largely because it was pointed out to me by someone who knows I'm a big chess addict.

Clearly there are a lot of liberties taken here, kind of mixing the 1972 Fischer match with the 1962 Cuban situation, but I believe this artistic license was justified. Just do not go into the movie expecting historical accuracy in the chess sense. Reviewers who gave really bad reviews based on that are entirely missing the point.

A decent watch.

7.5

This is a spy thriller set during the Cuban missile crisis, and centred around a fictional chess match between the Soviet and US chess champions in Warsaw. The US player is indisposed at the last minute, and the Americans substitute the last US player to beat him in a game, a college maths professor with a drink problem, played by Bill Pullman, who no longer plays chess. It transpires that the CIA have an interest in the match, with a clandestine meeting set up. But who can be trusted?

Bill Pullman is a good actor and does his best with the material, but the plot is pretty thin, the kind of thing you might see in a single episode of a TV series. There are also some irritating errors. One CIA person says that they know Russians have sent ships to Cuba but were "too small" to carry nuclear warheads. This is ludicrous, as. a nuclear warhead measures maybe three feet by one, and weighs about 100 kg. It would fit in a canoe, never mind a cargo ship.

On the chess front, I am probably being picky as I play chess quite a bit, but there are also several annoying aspects. The person who oversees the game is an "arbiter", not a "judge", and players do not pass draw offers via the arbiter, they just ask the other player. I understand that for film reasons the players are playing their moves unnaturally fast, but near the start the Pullman character says that the opening will "come down to the Italian game or the Rousseau defence" after the Russian's first move is revealed. This is absurd, as the Italian game is somewhat rare at grandmaster level, and the Rousseau opening is extremely obscure and would never be played at really top level. As for someone who hasn't played chess for a couple of decades beating the top Soviet player, that SI extremely implausible. Even Garry Kasparov, former world champion and arguably the best player of all time, struggled to perform in a tournament when he made a brief comeback a decade or so after he retired.

I had more of a practical issue with the main information to be passed at the clandestine meeting, which seemed unlikely to really be the key to the Cuban missile crisis to me but I don't want to reveal a spoiler. The bigger issue is that the film rather plods along, with limited tension. It is watchable, but hard to really recommend.

This is my first user review and I really feel like this movie deserves more than the current 6.3 score. Most of the negative reviews dig into the hows and why's of the Cold War, but has nothing to do with this movie. Okay, it's fictional and probably won't fit how things really went back in those days but there is so much good to say about this movie.

First of all: the acting performances are really great. Every personage fits well and keeps the story alive. Dohn Norwood is once again great. His mimics, gestures,... really blend in.

The atmosphere also gets really good. Dark, cold,.. it really sucks you in and make your experience the tensions of that moment in the Cold War.

This movie really surprised me and is well worth your time.