Pawn Sacrifice - Who is the true pawn in this game?

Rating: 6/10 (15 September 2015)

Welcome to the complex, neurotic and paranoid mind of the quirky and tragic Bobby Fischer, played by the impressive Toby Maguire. In this true story you see the young chess prodigy become a pawn for the American government during the Cold War against the Russians while battling his own madness. The tensions that made this genius believe that the Jews and Russians conspired in consistently trying to make him fail that led to his true fall and his anti-semitic views. Director Ed Zwick's Pawn Sacrifice gives a snapshot of time in this Cold War clash set during the 1972 World Chess Championship in Iceland. Following the build up and actual game to what is known as the worlds best ever played chess match* between the one and only American chess world champion Bobby Fischer and his Russian counterpart Boris Spassky.
Liev Schreiber plays the very cool and reigning chess champion Spassky, speaking every word of his dialogue in Russian, a language he didn't know at all before taking on this role. Schreiber and other supporting roles by Peter Sarsgaard his (Fischer) confidante and "chess whisperer" and Fischers lawyer played by Michael Stuhlbarg should all be thought of for an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. As in earlier roles Toby Maguire delivers a well executed performance that should could lead to an Oscar as well. He also produced the film together with director Ed Zwick and Gail Katz after spending the better part of a decade developing the film for his production company, Material Pictures. The only real little down-side about the movie was that it tended to be a bit repetitive leaving it a bit to long.
"It's really the free world against the lying, cheating, hypocritical Russians," - Bobby Fischer
Robert James "Bobby" Fischer born in Brooklyn was the man who won everything and achieved the highest price becoming world champion and a super star of his time. After all that success he derailed severely with his illness retiring from chess the same year he became world champion saying no to millions in commercial endorsements, loosing his world champion title and following legal trouble in his homeland of America because he violated U.S. restrictions on participating in chess events in Yugoslavia he got asylum in Iceland and died on January 17th 2008.
* The match was played over 26 games with game 6 known as the best ever chess match played.