'Pawn Sacrifice' A Review

Pawn Sacrifice is a biographical thriller about chess master Bobby Fischer(Tobey Maguire) and his journey to the World Chess Championship to face the Soviet Union's reigning champ Boris Spassky(Liev Schreiber). He battles mental illness which manifests itself in paranoia, obsessive behavior, narcissism, and antisemitism. The film is framed in the context of the cold war. The Soviet's using their stable of chess masters to prove their dominance and the US using Fischer as the only native chess master who can put up a fight.

The narrative is relatively conventional beginning with Bobby as a child through adolescence to his competitive years. We travel relatively quickly however once we arrive at the actual interesting portion of Fischer's life the film is half over. What is interesting about Bobby Fischer is his chess prowess, his games against Spassky, and his volatile nature. These elements are all touched upon however the film tries too hard to create a cold war sense of menace which is distracting from the real meat of the story.

Maguire as Fischer is passable, finding moments of real truth and emotion alternated with scenes of unbelievable caricature. Schreiber, as always, is imminently watchable however he doesn't actually speak until well into the third act. Peter Sarsgaard puts in his best performance in years as a priest who is Fischer's chess coach. The film tries to build out Fischer's life with a supporting cast of great character actors but ultimately he has no real connections. Fischer is a mad solitary genius so the burden rests on Maguire which he can't quite shoulder.

Succeeds in making chess interesting, Maguire falls short in the Oscar bait lead.

Rent It.