All the Wrong Moves

Rating: 5/10 (30 September 2015)

To make a great sports film, or any film rather, you have to make the audience care about the characters. Sadly, not only did I not particularly care about Pawn Sacrifice's characters, but the lead, is enormously unlikable. With that said, I acknowledge that it may have been Edward Zwick's intentions (who I am a fan of by the way). He gets great performances from his leads, the film just doesn't really mesh though.
Tobey Maguire gives one of his better efforts in recent memory, playing Bobby Fischer, a beloved chess player from the 1960's. Much like the film Miracle, this sports film deals with the political issues going on with the Soviets and Americans and integrates it into the films story organically. But Pawn Sacrifice does it to a much lesser extent especially considering most of the Soviet references are through Fischer's subconscious. Fischer is similar to Gene Hackman in The Conversation where he is constantly paranoid that people are watching and listening to everything he does. This revelation is the source of Maguire's performance and the depth that his character has. But once again, there was nothing that got me to care about what Fischer was going through, in fact, I was almost pulling for the Russians, and I don't think that was Zwick's intent.
Liev Schreiber plays Fischer's main competitor, Boris Spassky. Unfortunately he becomes underutilized as we only see glimpses of him before the final 35 minutes or so. That was another issue I had, is that the film takes a long time to really get going. For the first half, it seemed like most of the intriguing scenes were cut and then just explained right after. I'm not a chess guy, but we don't see him play chess for more than a few minutes until late in the film. It also didn't make much sense to me what his friends' use for coming along were other than keep him sane. We don't get a sense of their back- story or what traveling with a crazy man like Fischer gives them. So Pawn Sacrifice is really nothing special. It has a few wasted performances from Maguire and Schreiber and gives just a very average look at Bobby Fischer's life.
+Performances
+Last act
-Slow
-Unlikable lead
-Should I be rooting for the Russians?
5.7/10