PAWN SACRIFICE – The Review

The kid faces the champion, loses, fights his way back, and takes the rematch. It’s a familiar sports trope and PAWN SACRIFICE, the biography of volatile chess champ Bobby Fischer, is as formulaic in its own way as ROCKY (or if you prefer, SEARCHING FOR BOBBY FISCHER). The good news is that it’s an intense and fascinating drama capable of involving those who know little about chess as well as avid players.

Raised by his single Jewish mother, Brooklyn native Fischer was born in 1943 and was proficient on the chess board by the age of six. A self-taught player, he continued mastering his game though his early teens, when he defeated star players. As an adult (played by Tobey Maguire) Fischer’s success at the game grows, but his mental state begins to unravel and he suspects the government is watching his every move. Two men enter Bobby’s life to help manage his career – attorney Paul Marshall (Michael Stuhlbarg) and Father Bill Lombardy (Peter Sarsgaard), a heavy-drinking ex-chess champ. Much of the second half of PAWN SACRIFICE focuses on Fischer famously winning the world title from defending champion Boris Spassy in Reykjavik, Iceland in 1972.

Fischer’s story seems a natural for a movie, yet it’s a tricky one. Tasked with the challenge of making a two-player strategy board game seem cinematic is Ed Zwick, director of big-scale epics like GLORY and THE LAST SAMURAI and he does a terrific job working on a smaller battlefield. If you’re expecting close-ups of pawns and rooks being shuffled about in slow motion while dramatic music plays, there is a little of that, but Zwick wisely saves it until the film’s final half hour. He makes other good choices, including having the first match between Fischer and Spassky take place off-screen. Screenwriter Steven Knight provides an insightful look at not only chess but serious mental illness, the psychology of competition, and a battle the film refers to as “World War Three on a chessboard” that would prove to be a major propaganda win for America during the Cold War. James Newton Howard’s score has the right combination of wonder and the hint of something sinister. Period details are impeccable – not just in the costuming and art design but in the vintage newscasts about the event that are perfectly chosen and incorporated along with references to Watergate and the Vietnam War.

PAWN SACRIFICE is anchored by the outstanding performance of Tobey Maguire as Fischer. Mercurial and highly-strung, his interpretation of this tortured genius is textured and complex. There may bit a bit too much focus on his paranoia (how many times do we have to see him dismantling his phone?), but Maguire makes Fischer’s journey from a swaggering “ego-crushing” genius to a shaken shell of a man believable. Liev Schreiber, 90%  of whose part is spoken in Russian, is perfect as the arrogant, confident Spassky. Bobby Fischer eventually descended into madness, arrests, crazed outbursts and allegiance to a religious doomsday cult before his death at age 65 from kidney disease. The film addresses some of this in a brief addendum complete with startling archival footage. Fischer’s bizarre post-Spassky life might one day make for an interesting film of its own.

4 1/2 of 5 Stars

PAWN SACRIFICE opens in St. Louis Friday September 18th exclusively at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Theater