Pawn Sacrifice portrays the tragic rise and fall of Nixon-era international chess whiz Bobby Fischer. In the hands of director Edward Zwick and producer/star Tobey Maguire, it's a gripping bio-thriller, a roller coaster of emotional highs and lows reinforced by the courageous way the filmmakers have confronted their protagonist's demons and the honorable way they have refused to overlook his hideous flaws. The movie is the international chess world's Raging Bull, showing that boxing is not the only sport where a man can go 15 rounds with himself.
Like a boxer, Bobby Fischer grew up in a world that was a blood sport in all but name. Raised by a single ethnically Russian mom, Joan (Lily Rabe, with Sophie Nelisse as young Joan), young Bobby (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick is teenage Bobby, with Aiden Lovekamp as Bobby at 10) is furious that mom won't tell him who his dad is. Mom is frustrated by her son's obsessive pursuit of chess, punching way above his weight and defeating middle-aged opponents with a blinkered glee.
While Maguire (5 ft. 8 in., 40 years old) is a tad short and a wee bit too old to play the 6 ft. 2 in. Fischer (who was just shy of 30 in 1972 during his chess war with the Russians in Reykjavik, Iceland), he compensates with a low-key performance that hints of Fischer's inner turmoil. His performance allows both an appreciation of the inside baseball of international chess and the film's governing paradox that the more Fischer dominated his Russian opponents (Liev Schreiber appears as Russian champ Boris Spassky), the closer he came to a mental breakdown. We also listen in on Spassky's frustration with his Soviet handlers, who see championship chess as war by other means. As often is the case, the subtitles are hard to read, due to the small size of the font and the failure to outline the letters in black or yellow.
In the film's closing coda we see and hear the real older Bobby Fischer, who was about 65 when he died in 2008 from a damaged liver. One of the virtues of this tragic tale of a truly unpleasant individual is the great supporting cast assembled by director Zwick, whose reputation was carved out by underdog gems like 1989's Glory, the Oscar-winning tale of the first black unit of soldiers to serve in the Civil War. Veteran character actor Peter Sarsgaard shines as a priest who becomes a most unlikely spiritual advisor to Fischer, a man who appears beyond such help. Michael Stuhlbarg is one of Fischer's put-upon handlers, and Robin Weigert appears as Fischer's sister Regina just long enough to call Bobby on his chutzpah when he claims to be persecuted by Russians and Jews: "Bobby, you're Jewish!"
Pawn Sacrifice is well-served by exteriors shot in 2013 in Reykjavik. The balance of the interior scenes were captured during 41 days in Montreal. I mention this because indie-film buffs often fail to grasp how important authentic locations are to diving inside the head of a complicated, conflicted personality like Fischer, a steaming cauldron of rabidly "incorrect" ideas who would end his life as a fugitive from American justice.
I'm glad I could encounter Bobby Fischer in this extraordinarily sensitive turn from Tobias Vincent Maguire, a Santa Monica, CA native whose father was part Irish, Austrian, Puerto Rican, Danish, French, and German, while his mom was of English stock. It's real early in the Oscar sweepstakes �" there's a ton of diverse and eclectic film releases between now and New Year's �" but Tobey Maguire has earned a spot in the Best Actor Oscar competition.