Well worth watching

Rating: 6/10 (23 April 2018)

An excellent screenplay by Steven Knight makes chess just about as thrilling as it can get - and you don't need to know anything about chess to enjoy it. Couple with the Cold War backdrop and it works on two levels. It is also a look at Fischer's rather sad decline and it would have been nice to see more of the post-game developments rather than the pre-game story.
Some of the direction and/or editing slows the pace a little too much in places and cutting the running time by 15 minutes would have tightened it up considerably, perhaps garnering nother * but it would be churlish to criticise it too much.
The actors are all superb with a special mention of Michael Stuhlbarg but that's to single out one gem in a bag of diamonds. And an excellent score by James Newton Howard.
It didn't have a wide release but it's well worth watching if you can catch it.