Face a Face Com o Inimigo

Peter Sanderson is a chess master in town for a major tournament. After visiting her and having sex with her, Sanderson's casual lover is murdered and left in a strange pose. The police suspect him as the person who was with her moments before her death but things are confused when Sanderson is contacted by the killer wishing to play a game with him. The murders continue as Sanderson and the police try to outsmart the killer – however clues still indicate that Sanderson could still be a suspect himself.

There are very few thrillers that would chose to set themselves in the world of grandmaster chess as the basis for their plot, and even fewer that would manage to pull it off convincingly; this film falls into the former but not the latter. The plot only really uses chess as the background so that it can make a rather tenuous link between that game and the game that is played between Sanderson and the killer. This basic plot is interesting enough even if it doesn't really stand out from the basic video-thriller genre that the chess connection suggests it is better than. The chess connection doesn't really work as it doesn't actually fit in with the murders very well – feeling forced quite a lot; certainly the whole chess championship is just a side issue and the film never manages to actually convince that this is a battle of wits, in fact the police do most of the leg work and Peter only occasionally blurts out the odd 'Eureka in the bathtub' line.

The solution is semi-clever in that I realized that the film had tricked me from the first scene onwards, but, despite this fact, the identity of the killer is as out-of-the-blue and you would expect it to be. The film is littered with minor characters who jump out of shadows, appear at suspicious times or say menacing things under their breath, all red herrings of course but most of them are not explained and it is obvious the writer never thought about whether or not they made sense in any context other than them being red herrings. Having said that, the film is enjoyable but mainly as a genre film rather than anything clever or particularly inventive. The lack of a really clever cat'n'mouse game was a letdown for me because of the potential that the chess connection had suggested.

The cast are a fairly average mix that contribute to the feeling that this is a genre film rather than anything particularly clever. Lambert has had a very mixed career and this is just another strange role that he doesn't play that well – certainly the words 'Lambert' and 'chess master' are words that words that don't seem to naturally appear together. Sticking with the clichés of both the genre and Lambert films, we get the obligatory love scene (twice!) that have little relevance but gives the film the added selling point of breasts! Skerrit and Baldwin are better than the rest of the cast even with poor characters – the two of them control each scene they are in and make the film feel better than it is.

Overall, the title and background suggest a clever game of wits between a chess master and the killer but it doesn't manage to be anything more than an OK genre film. The twist is out of the blue as always but getting there is quite fun and the end result is a film that is enjoyable but quite unspectacular.

Christopher Lambert stars as Peter Sanderson a master chess player who is targeted by a serial killer who is killing women and blaming it on Sanderson, Captain Frank Stedman(Tom Skerritt) and Detective Andy Wagner believe that Sanderson is behind it all, while a Dr.Kathy Shepperd unwisely falls for Sanderson in this entertaining yet confusing thriller. The ending while a good twist, is somewhat disappointing. However Knight Moves works fairly well most of the time.

Knight Moves starts as a clever movie about a murder investigation over some "Zodiac" wannabe. It's one of those movies where you'll only get your answers at the end-ish.

"End-ish" because, as the movie goes on, it seems like they couldn't keep up with their complicated murder plot, so they pretty much simplify things out.

In the end, an abrupt ending and a bunch of weird fight scenes sour out the movie.

In 1972, two boys play in a tournament. The loser stabs the winner with a pen. The loser's life falls apart. The winner Peter Sanderson (Christopher Lambert) becomes a grandmaster. He's a single dad and a womanizer. His latest groupie is found dead. Capt. Frank Sedman (Tom Skerritt) and his loud-mouth partner Andy Wagner (Daniel Baldwin) investigate. Sedman is under political pressure to keep the tournament going. He brings in psychiatrist Kathy Sheppard (Diane Lane) to test Peter and she falls in love with him.

This is trying way too hard to make chess cool. I have no problem with yet another dark serial killer movie. Daniel Baldwin is over-acting. Christopher Lambert is not good. None of the clues get the audience involved. It's a whodunnit in which nobody really cares about.

Some consider opening scenes about events from past, when they were children, shot in B/W as great. I don't think so. It was too long, slow(ed), over top. And worst, it made it much more predictable.

Direction was fine most of part, script, dialogs, acting not really. I blame mostly script and dialogs for seemingly bad acting. No actor which would pull it much better than Daniel Baldwin, because it was just character written as utterly stupid one. C. Lambert was OK most part, in some scenes seemed away.

Despite mentioned flaws it could be solid thriller, but last 10-15 minutes were really letdown. Extremely predictable, cliche overall, and just 'game over', the end. Still, it was watchable - I watched it on TV some 25 years ago, and now on some better display. I would give it higher rating then, now I'm more mature :-)

Ratings:

C. Lambert: 6

D. Lane: 6

Tom Skerrit: 4

Daniel Baldwin: 5

Director: 7

Script: 4