Watch a Russian-Speaking Liev Schreiber Throw Down the Chess Gauntlet

Finally, in 1972 and in the thick of the Cold War and U.S./Soviet antagonism, Fischer gets his chance to confront Spassky in the “Match of the Century ” in Reykjavik, Iceland (lensing was actually done on location).

Anyone who followed that match as it played out (as I did) must surely suspect that no movie could it justice.

The movie was directed by the smart director Edward Zwick and penned by the respectable Steven Knight. But there is, of course, an irresistible urge to see the dramatization of actual events, especially involving someone as nuttily charismatic as Fischer. Bobby is expertly played by Tobey Maguire, and we scored the Colroado exclusive. He’s also realistic enough to know that beneath Fischer’s manias is a formidable foe. But the film has no climax or resolution, giving the impression that its only objective was to list th major events of Bobby Fischer’s life.

Hoping to discourage the boy from such frivolity by exposing him to better players, his mother takes him to a chess club, but the reverse happens.

Whereas the actor’s unflagging power and dedication is the movie’s indispensable energy supply, his at-times overwrought efficiency shall be each too loopy and never loopy sufficient for many who keep in mind Fischer in his prime (he died in 2008 at age 64) or acquired a style of the person in Garbus’ documentary. The focus, his epic battle against a Russian counterpart. Truly, the world watched as Fischer defeated Spassky, being the “greatest chess game ever played” in history. First to reach is Paul Marshall (“A Critical Man’s” Stuhlbarg), a profitable music enterprise lawyer. The film hints that Marshall’s patriotic attempts to help Fischer dominate the Communists had a connection to the US government.

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. 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”.

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.

By this point, another obstacle in Fischer’s way has become clear: His paranoid, at times anti-Semitic delusions have gained in strength and his connection to reality has become increasingly tenuous. It appears exclusively a matter of time earlier than his calls for derail his life.

Yet, as someone says, “out of all the craziness come games of such unimaginable beauty”. Zwick and his ace cinematographer Bradford Young (Selma) have found a way to make camera moves that are just as complex as all the chess board moves in the storyline.