Review of Pawn Sacrifice (2015) by Muhammed S — 13 Sep 2014

My only real complaint here is not being allowed to see much. The board is only shown in parts and, as an extremely casual, chess playing I was trying to see how the wins were made or trying to understand how this mistakes were made and traps set. I get wanting to make everything accessible but if you have people in a chess movie, it's a good bet they're okay with seeing some chess.

Tobey Maguire does do a great job here. I also loved Peter Sarsgaard too - even as sometimes he looked like either Michael Fassbender or Johnny Lee Miller. Politics and frenzy all boiled down to two men and a chess board. There are many games going on here, real and imagined, and the film does to a good job of letting that play out even while cutting quickly between things and making moving pieces insanely dramatic. It almost makes the wizard chess match in Harry Potter look subdued.