Edward Zwick has always been a guilty pleasure of mine, in my opinion he makes terribly flawed melodramatic films but they are very entertaining, engaging and likable because they take themselves seriously despite having logic flaws, case in point - Legends of the fall, The Last Samurai and Blood Diamond. While Pawn Sacrifice is not as good as these previous Edward Zwick films I mentioned it's still a very decent, watchable film. Tobey Maguire is in peak condition as the eccentric but genius chess legend Bobby Fischer, an Academy award nomination worthy performance, people have been paying attention to what he has been doing outside of Spiderman and the good work just keeps on coming. Liev Schreiber plays his nemesis and antagonist, the that time chess world champion Boris Spassky and delivers a good restrained performance compared to Maguire's loud and flashy Bobby Fischer. Good film but there are cheesy moments which have always hung over Edward Zwick's films like grim music playing when Russians win, and cheerful music plays when Americans win, I found this to be rather simple, childish and manipulative in an otherwise a decent film, the audience is smart enough to pick sides but Zwick insists on telling us which one to root for. There are some other daftly executed scenes in the film as well which hurts the film's quality. I spoke to my Dad after watching the movie and according to him, movie is still a bit restrained in showing how crazy Bobby Fischer got regarding antisemitism and conspiracy theories, truly a mad genius who did four chess moves ahead of his opponent and went to the hotel pool to relax while his opponent is still struggling to grasp what just happened. India's own Vishwanathan Anand has claimed Bobby Fischer to be the greatest chess player of all times.
Review of Pawn Sacrifice
