In the Cold War, the real legend is Bobbie Fisher, an old American chess player who found himself in front of two great powers at that time. Bobbie Fischer is meeting at one table in order to enter the biggest challenge in the game, which he excelled with the greatest Soviet player, Boris Spassky. It was his participation in the 1972 World Chess Championships, which was a real history and a major challenge to Fischer's world powers at the time.
'Pawn Sacrifice' takes all of those tropes and cranks them up to 11, far past the barometers of either believable human behavior or credible filmmaking.
Features a showboat performance from Tobey Maguire as the increasingly disturbed Fischer, along with a more composed one from Liev Schreiber as the taciturn Spassky.
[Zwick] makes the historic matches come to life, such that even non-players will appreciate the gripping excitement and intellectual rigour to be found in the battle of wits that is chess.
Like all of Zwick's works, it's perfectly watchable fare, but it's often infuriating for its refusal to dig deeper into its incredibly compelling subject.
