Tobey Maguire plays Bobby Fischer in “Pawn Sacrifice”

“Pawn Sacrifice” is rated PG-13 and opens Wednesday. Truly, the world watched as Fischer defeated Spassky, being the “greatest chess game ever played” in history.

Edward Zwick’s film blames Fischer’s paranoia, anti-Semitism and general craziness on his unconventional upbringing by a single mother (Robin Weigert) who was a Jewish communist and who refused to tell her son which of her many lovers was his father.

When the chaos of his surroundings threatens to overwhelm, young Bobby turns to chess, a game he taught himself at age 6, playing out matches in his head to calm himself.

All the time, his goal was to beat the Russians, the reigning monarchs of the worldwide chess world.

By the time he hit his teens, Fisher became an global grand-master. “I am prepared, it is my time”, he says, however regardless of Fischer’s preternatural talent, the obstacles to attaining his dream are many.

At this point, like the cavalry arriving in a John Ford western, Fischer gets some much-needed help.

With a grandmaster priest (Peter Sarsgaard) serving as his second and unofficial coach, Fischer pursues the world championship, which the Soviets fiercely prize because of its enormous symbolic significance during the Cold War.

Looking coolly unflappable behind ever-present sunglasses and speaking excellent Russian, Schreiber (who also starred in Zwick’s “Defiance”) makes Spassky the ideal foil for Fischer.

The Bobby Fischer biopic Pawn Sacrifice seems to have been made not because someone had insight into the chess champion’s character, but because someone realized Bobby Fischer was famous but didn’t have a biopic yet. Particularly memorable is a scene on the Santa Monica sand the place the apoplectic American screams on the baffled Russian, “I am coming after you”. 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.