Pawn Sacrifice review: Tobey Maguire stars as chess champ Bobby Fischer in this gripping biopic

Edward Zwick and Steven Knight are two seriously talented individuals. The former is a veteran, who has made excellent films like Glory, Legends of the Fall, The Siege, The Last Samurai and Blood Diamond, while the latter is the show runner of the terrific Peaky Blinders and Tom Hardy’s mesmerizing single location thriller, Locke. Bringing both of them to work on one project, Pawn Sacrifice, proves to be an excellent decision. Even if you have never played chess in your life, Pawn Sacrifice is fun to watch. The film follows the life of Bobby Fischer (Tobey Maguire), the American chess legend who squared off in 1972 in Iceland with Boris Spassky (Liev Schrieber) in what is still known as the greatest chess game of all time. This particular chess match is placed at the very end of the film, with preceding events taking us into Fischer’s life and letting us see both his genius and his mental illness. [caption id=“attachment_2438634” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Pawn Sacrifice. Twitter[/caption] The greatest challenge for a film about a chess is to make it thrilling because the game is probably the least cinematic sport there is. Most of the planning and strategizing happens in players’ minds and the moves have no fanfare. They are just little objects, moving from one square to another, on an unthreatening board. This is not the stuff of pulse-pounding adventure. It is a testament to Zwick’s direction and Knight’s writing that Pawn Sacrifice makes chess games so tense and exciting. The bits in the film that showcase Bobby’s mental illness are surprisingly different from previous Hollywood films with similar narrative arcs. While films like A Beautiful Mind tend to sugarcoat their protagonists and portray them using broad strokes and outright lies, Pawn Sacrifice is bold enough to showcase Fischer realistically. That makes Maguire’s Fischer a more sympathetic character because the film makes sure the audience knows that Fischer isn’t really in control of his actions. Maguire, who has also produced Pawn Sacrifice, adds a feather light nuance to his performance. Even during the loud and insane moments, his Fischer is subtly, tragically human. It’s been a while since we’ve seen a mainstream Hollywood actor deliver such a genuinely emotional and moving performance without resorting to any melodrama. Peter Saargaard too makes an impression in his cameo as Bill Lombardy, an American grandmaster and a Catholic priest, who tries to rehabilitate Fischer along with the help of lawyer Paul Marshall (Michael Stuhlbarg). There is a terrific undercurrent of lies and deceit in the narrative arc as the US government appears to take advantage of Fischer’s genius with the chessboard by lobbying anti-Soviet propaganda grenades, which only adds to his mental instability. Zwick and Knight’s big achievement in the film is portraying the media’s and public’s obsession with genius, and their desire to watch an unstable celebrity self destruct in broad public view. The finale, which chronicles this angle of the story, has a quietly powerful impact and makes us question why we are the way we are. Everyone loves an underdog David who can defeat Goliath, but the only thing more entertaining is to see David slowly become Goliath and behead himself in daylight, surrounded by cameras.