Pawn Sacrifice

When I was a kid, Bobby Fischer was a big deal. He was a brilliant chess player known for his eccentricities. And I was perplexed as to how chess had become a big deal.

Turns out it was another cold war proxy fight in which the U.S. and Russia were trying to prove their inherent superiority. This was not Bobby Fischer's idea; he just wanted to be a chess champ. In the movie, he's fairly oblivious to the tides of history, at least until he gets caught up in paranoid theories.

This is a very interesting movie with a terrific performance by Tobey Maguire that manages to make chess riveting even if, like me, you have to real idea what's going on. The story it tells is clear and concise, as a mercurial Fischer descends into paranoia while those around him push him forward at any cost.

In fact, the story is a little too neat. The movie feels very much like the movie you'd expect to see if you remember Bobby's weird demands and celebrity. But usually life is a little more complicated than a movie. Reading about Fischer on wikipedia, I saw things that didn't fit in with the movie's view. For example, Fischer was unusually athletic for a chess player, working out regularly during the World Championship, and his love life went beyond hooking up with a prostitute; he later married, which is hard to imagine of Maguire's version.

Still, this is a fascinating, well paced movie that is constantly engaging. This is one of these movies, like All the President's Men, that has figured out how to bring intense drama to hard work and tedious thoroughness.

It also makes me wish I'd actually read some of those chess books my dad bought me; I always just sort of stumbled through without ever understanding the complexities of the game.

"Bobby won't crack, he will explode." Ever since he was a young boy Bobby Fischer (Maguire) has been obsessed with chess. His dream of becoming the youngest world champion ever has been crushed by the Russian's way of playing and he slowly starts to lose his mind. Wanting to prove to everyone, and himself that is is the best in the world he sets up a series of matches with Boris Spassky (Schreiber), the best player in the world. As the match draws closer Fischer begins to descend further into madness and it starts to affect his ability to play. I knew very little about the real story of Bobby Fischer before watching this so most of this was new to me. For a movie about chess I have to say the movie was actually pretty exciting to watch, and Maguire really surprised me with his acting. I'm not sure how historically accurate this is but watching it the tenseness was there and you really felt uncomfortable for and with Bobby. One of the surprise movies of the year that deserves a bigger audience than it will get. I really enjoyed this and recommend it. Overall, great acting and great drama. More movies like this should be made. I give it an A-.

Pawn Sacrifice gets to dramatize the real-life story of Bobby Fischer (Tobey Maguire), Cold War-era chess prodigy and champion. In a clear attempt at prestige candidacy, the film falls victim to the usual biopic pitfall by relying solely on the events as they played out, as opposed to using them to determine a story worth telling. Maybe a bit too long but certainly worth it

Tobey Maguire is a very fine actor. Regrettably, he is not cast very frequently and since the failure of "Spider-Man 3" in 2007, his fans have not seen very much of him. With "Pawn Sacrifice", however, he once again showed his talent, depicting American chess genius and grandmaster Bobby Fischer from his childhood years up to the famous World Chess Championship in Reykjavík, Iceland in 1972. Co-starring Liev Schreiber, Peter Sarsgaard and Michael Stuhlbarg, the film has no lack of good acting.

This is a nice vehicle for Tobey Maguire who does a good job of portraying a paranoid schizophrenic, but that person is not Robert James Fischer. They got Maguire's hair style right but otherwise any resemblance between the tall, lanky, expansive Bobby Fischer and Maguire is slight. He probably didn't see enough footage of Fischer at that age. He didn't use any of Fischer's mannerisms that I noticed and of course Fischer was several inches taller. Liev Schreiber who played Spassky actually looks a bit like Spassky but is bigger and more robust. So we have in the movie Fischer vs. Spassky at the chess board but Spassky bigger than Fischer! As for games mentioned in some detail I had to go back to the first and sixth games of the match to recall what happened and to compare my perception with that of the commentary in the movie. The sixth game was a brilliant game as almost everybody agrees, but contrary to some popular opinion Fischer did not blunder away his bishop in game one. He and Spassky were in a clearly drawn bishop and pawn ending. He wanted more, but there was nothing he could do, so what he did was sacrifice his bishop for two pawns, not as some people think in an attempt to win the game but to show his confidence and to shake Spassky up a bit. Fischer thought the resulting position after many moves would be a draw. He was wrong but this is an example of Fischer psychology: I will make you play a hundred moves if necessary just to show you how strong I am. You will weaken not me.

Some reviewers pointed out some chessic type errors but there weren't that many and they were minor. Here's one they got right that may surprise some people. Notice that Fischer used the descriptive notation ("P-K4") while most other grandmasters even back in 1972 used algebraic notation ("e4"). And while there were chess clock on analyst boards where they serve no purpose at least the boards were set up right with the white square at the player's right hand, avoiding a common error in movies.

Probably the biggest error had nothing to do with chess but with the fact that Fischer's mental illness at the time of the Spassky match had not developed as much as the movie suggests. His personality was more rounded than displayed. He actually had a charming side. People liked him in spite his bad manners and selfishness. There's a YouTube video of him on TV with Bob Hope filmed sometime shortly after the match with Spassky that shows a very different Fischer than the one Maguire portrayed.

The bit with the girl (sarcastically she says to Fischer: "it was good for me too" as he studies a chess game in bed) was apparently director Edward Zwick's take on the nagging question of Fischer's sexuality, meaning yes he was heterosexual, but chess was just more interesting.

The real disappointment for me was that they did not make clear the really great triumphant of Fischer's preceding the championship match. He destroyed three of the top grandmasters en route to the title match, at one point winning 20 games in a row. Amazing. The greatest streak in grandmaster history. So he was a clear favorite although Spassky was the World Champion. That's why he wanted so much to win the first game and confirm immediately that he was clearly superior.

I was also disappointed that Fischer's life after winning the championship was not explored. I had hoped for a cinematic take on what happened to "The Wandering King" (the title of a book about his life by Hans Bohm and Kees Jongkind). Perhaps that material would be better presented in a documentary than in a popular flick.

Bottom line: worth seeing but not as good as I had hoped.

--Dennis Littrell, author of "The World Is Not as We Think It Is"