Film

Pawn Sacrifice

Name: Pawn Sacrifice
Genre: Thriller, Drama
Released: 2015
Cast: Tobey Maguire, Peter Sarsgaard, Liev Schreiber, Michael Stuhlbarg, Lily Rabe

Biopic

Pawn Sacrifice follows Bobby Fischer's rise to chess stardom during the Cold War, dramatizing his 1972 match against Soviet champion Boris Spassky. It's a taut psychological thriller that treats chess like espionage, mining the paranoia and genius of an unstable prodigy while capturing the geopolitical stakes of the moment. For viewers drawn to ambitious biopics about brilliant, broken people.

TMDb rating

3.4

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you are drawn to stories of one brilliant, difficult mind pushed against the machinery of state and rivalry, and you enjoy tense, talky rooms and period texture.

Skip it if the film moves through chess games at a measured, sometimes repetitive clip, and its portrait of a troubled mind is more restrained than fully inside his head.

What it asks of you: Running about two hours, it wants patient attention to board positions and long silences more than fast cuts or big set pieces.

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