From: regan@netcom.com (NEIL REGAN)
Subject: KNIGHT MOVES OR HORSING AROUND!!!!!MOVE THE HORSEY!
Summary: VERY CHESSY MOVIE - MOST OF THE ACTION OFF THE BOARD!
Keywords: KNIGHT,HORSE,MOVIE
Organization: Netcom - Online Communication Services  (408 241-9760 guest) 
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 10:02:42 GMT

   Maybe this should read Grandmaster almost beaten (to death)!
Sometimes I wonder what is to live the life of a Grandmaster going
from tournament to tournament and living in plush hotels as well as
eating fine foods and having women at each hotel like sailors use to
have a girl in every port.  Knight moves touches on the life of a GM
playing for qualification for the world championship as most chess
players would like to fantasize.  The action takes place in 1972
playing in some tournament where as a child prodigy he is paired against
another around the same age about ten. Like in all good chess games their
are winners and their are losers. After our hero has checkmated the other
child prodigy he reaches across to shake his hand and his challenger stabs
him with an ink pen and is wisked away to some Mental hospital never to
be seen again.(Yeah Right) Well almost anyway, the psycho has his father
leaving home as his mother is committing suicide or so it seems you see
the kid go up stairs to the gory scene with his mother having her wrist slashed
and bleeding to death as he approaches she is still conscious clinging to
life. Does he call the police or hospital to help his mother no he gets the
key grabs his chess set and goes downstairs and eats his milk and cookies
while he is studying over the chess board.   Years later their is a Major
chess tournament for qualification to the world championship with a uscf
offical looking emblem to boot.  This is the first time we really see
what our hero GM looks like as he finishes off an early round opponent.
The tournament hall has a Overhead computer controlled chess set to display
the number one board our hero leads everyone else by 2 points. There are
offical looking chess clocks on all the boards with the focus of attention
always on Board # 1

        COMPLETE with all the Tournament fixings you would expect at a
match with a large viewing audience. There are the usual Bobby Fischer
complaints about the Chairs and how slow the pieces move across the Board
as a distraction to his game.  They of course correct all the flaws as so
to provide ideal conditions for the matches. The computer expert fixes the
Overhead by speeding up the program to make the pieces glide across the screen.
He has someone who is partly blind that is his Second and trys to get him
to analyse a position or game but he is always to busy as he is a father to
his daughter Erica and has a computer consultant that fixes his computer he
supposedly uses to analyze his chess games, however,he instalss Mario 3
on it instead and she is seen playing it without ever using it for chess.
Later in the movie they do use the computer to access USCF's database to
loacate anyone who has everplayed a certain opening known as Variation 2(?)
against him in order to try to figure who the villain is and trying to
locate any likely suspects.

       THROUGHOUT the movie you do not know whether the GM is which child
prodigy. Is he Mister Clean or part of the Dark Side of the Force.  All
evidence points to him as a GM very clever psycho with opportunity but
no motive unless he is the child prodigy that ate the cookies rather than
the one who won the game in the early years. Well revenge is the motive
and their is murder committed time after time. It happens in a City that
if you overlayed a chess board mylar across a Map of the city you would
see that the murders are located almost like "KOLTY's KNIGHT TOUR" but
it aint so! The original child Prodigy now Grown is making phone calls
giving hints as where to look for his next victim the GM of course is working
the police trying to catch him. There are constant referals to chess 
terminology,however,old cliches and general chess philosphy such as the
World is a Chess Board along with the usual parry and thrust that verbally
takes place with the GOOD LOOKING GIRL that anyone would like to have in the Sac (pun!)   The mention of how the world is  just a  reflection of life on
the chessboard is carefully weaved along with the opening credits that show
a king on the underside of the villains shoe leather so as to leave footprints
that are unique endup playing no role in trapping the villain.  Clues left
at the murder sites always leave one word that is suppose to end this game
between our Hero and the Psycho if he can only decipher the clues.  It
becomes more like a puzzle than a Chess game with the GM being outplayed
on the field and the cops being fished into covering a wrong site as they
swallow a decoy sacrifice on the wrong side of the board (city) while the
psycho gets away with another one. Finally he is playing a critical game
with the score tied when the police enter the tournament hall and arrest
him knock over the pieces and cuff him. He is taken off to jail when it
comes to him that the game is soon to end and that his Daughter would be
his next victim. He over comes the police and escapes goes to his place
of residence and finds his daughter missing and a police detective murder
or murdered in his hotel suite.  He recieves a phone call from the villain
about ready to do away with his daughter when he recognizes a sound in the background that indicates they are in that hotel basement he rushes downstairs
and places a phone call to the basement the villain picks up the phone
figuring he would have time to finish off his daughter before he gets 
downstairs to save her especially if he is talking to him and keeps him
pre-occupied on the phone when our Hero shows up with a portable phone nad
and more importantly a gun! Unfornately a struggle developes and the GM
our hero gets his clock cleaned meanwhile, the police detective and the
Good Looker showup in his apartment and find the other police detective
killed.  They hit some kind of intercom which was monitoring the struggle
taking place below and rush to his aide to late! to help our hero who has
had his banged into a pipe losing all 2750 rating points he appears dead or
unconscious.The detective immediatedly jumps into the struggle and promptly
gets his throat cut and then the Lady psychologist who was our Hero's girl
trys to use logic to explain why she understands what this Psycho is doing
and why when the conversation stops he appears to have backed off from
when he suddenly gives here one of those  "yeah right looks" and lunges for
her when our heroes wakes and fires his gun several times as the movie ends
with the faltering of the Real Killer with enough lead to cause serious
brain damage.  It is assumed that was CHECK and Mate!  It is too bad that]
the match which was interupted by the police was never ressumed to see
what the result would have been as it does leave some loose ends.
I would proabably rate this movie 30% chess 10% sex 60% murder mystery.
There really is only Limited scenes with the Chess activities but it is
the only thing around since Dangerous Moves won the best Foreign Movie
several Years ago. I spent too much time writing this but my friend Gabe
always wants to know how it ends without seeing the Movie!

                          neil
             


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