Directed with earnest blandness by Edward Zwick (Glory, The Last Samurai) from a script by Steven Knight (Eastern Promises), the film follows the standard biopic formula, starting with Bobby as an intense, precocious kid who becomes America’s youngest chess champion-and then becomes a paranoid, temperamental adult played by Tobey Maguire.
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In 1972, the the volatile New Yorker earns the right to face the Russian veteran in the hotly anticipated “Match of the Century”, a 21 game competition in Reykjavik, Iceland, that could end 24 years of Soviet domination of the World Chess Championship. And with “Pawn Sacrifice“, it served as an impressive and inspiring addition to the Fischer film collection. Though given to anti-Semitic rants and conspiracy theories, when Bobby plays chess, he’s almost unbeatable.
Hoping to discourage the boy from such frivolity by exposing him to raised gamers, his mom takes him to a chess membership, however the reverse occurs. The focus, his epic battle against a Russian counterpart. The film hints that Marshall’s patriotic attempts to help Fischer dominate the Communists had a connection to the United States government.
As Bobby travels the globe with manager Paul Marshall (Michael Stuhlbarg) and coach, Father Bill Lombardy (Peter Saragaard) Fisher crushes the world’s top players in his relentless pursuit of his ultimate opponent, the Soviet chess grand-master, Boris Spasky (Liev Schreiber) who has never lost a match. Especially memorable is a scene on the Santa Monica sand where the apoplectic American screams at the baffled Russian, “I’m coming after you”. It seems only a matter of time before his demands derail his life.
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But, as somebody says, “out of all of the craziness come video games of such unimaginable magnificence”. Really, I’m just putting that out there for the spectacle: we’ve finally got a late night talk show host breaking down and simply playing a Milton Bradley game on national television.
