Review of Pawn Sacrifice (2015) by Spangle — 05 Feb 2016
Though the performance from Tobey Maguire is fantastic and the mental condition aspect of the film is handled perfectly, Pawn Sacrifice does largely fall a bit flat. Though it is never boring or a bad film, it only rarely captivates and even worse, it is like every other biopic ever made.
Following the biopic formula to a fault, Pawn Sacrifice gave me deja vu many times as I could have sworn I saw this film before, even though I had not. This is problematic for a biopic. Fortunately, the story of Bobby Fischer is quite interesting, the scenes of his mental turmoil are grueling and sad to watch, and the performances of Maguire, Peter Sarsgaard, and Liev Schrieber, are all very, very good.
At the end of the day, I wish this one was just not so typical because it has a good story, but its generic nature certainly hurt it at the end of the day.
This review of Pawn Sacrifice (2015) was written by Spangle on 05 Feb 2016.
Pawn Sacrifice has generally received positive reviews.
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