Delayed Reaction: Pawn Sacrifice

The Pitch: A Beautiful [Chess] Mind

I should've had my fill of the Bobby Fisher story by now. I've seen or read several stories about him and, more specifically, the Spassky match. He is an undeniably interesting figure to examine. After all, he's crazy, has an ego, and plays a competitive game. He's tailor-made for a screenplay. I didn't need another story about the Spassky match to learn anything. Mostly, I was curious how Ed Zwick* was going to do it. Tobey Maguire is a good Bobby Fisher. Liev Schreiber is an OK Boris Spassky. I liked Peter Sarsgaard as the chess champion priest. I was only bothered to see Evelyne Brochu show up because I inevitably spend a few minutes convincing myself that she isn't Rose Byrne**.

*Btw, as I've pointed out before, I'm another movie closer to seeing all of Zwick's feature films, almost all by accident. I only have three left. Of those, only Leaving Normal would require me to go out of my way to watch.

** I can't be the only one, right? They look similar. (See, see?)

The film has a tough balancing act. I get that there's no way to keep up the tension of the entire 24 game chess match. Regardless of how pivotal game 6 was, I couldn't help but feel like the movie cut it short. The balancing act of explaining the world of competitive chess and depicting Fischer's fractured mental state proved to be difficult. I feel like the film assumed the audience was convinced that Bobby Fischer would beat Spassky before the match even began. If Spassky was going to be a straw man like that, then it spent more time than it needed to showing his side. And if Spassky was supposed to be a threat, then the focus of Fischer's mental started to drown that out. The movie overall, is fine, but the calibration was off. After watching it, I can see why it never got a wide release in theaters.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend