Bobby Fischer first makes waves in the elite world of chess as a 6-year-old whiz-kid from Brooklyn famous for his laser-like concentration and ability to dominate all challengers. By his teens, the boy wonder has gone from chess savant to international grandmaster, but his meteoric rise is punctuated by unpredictable personal behavior and escalating demands that raise hackles in the conservative chess establishment.
As he travels the globe with manager Paul Marshall (Michael Stuhlbarg) and coach Father Bill Lombardy (Peter Sarsgaard), Fischer crushes the world’s top players in the relentless pursuit of his ultimate quarry: indomitable Soviet chess grandmaster Boris Spassky (Liev Schreiber). In 1972 the volatile New Yorker earns the right to face the Russian veteran in the hotly anticipated “Match of the Century,” a 21-game competition in Reykjavík, Iceland, that could end 24 years of Soviet domination of the World Chess Championship.
But Fischer’s paranoia and growing obsession with conspiracy theories disrupt the match and his erratic behavior unnerves the normally unflappable Spassky. With the competition increasingly mirroring the tense geopolitics of the Cold War era, even his closest advisors are unsure if Fischer’s actions are the calculated antics of an antisocial eccentric or signs that he is truly unstable. Pawn Sacrifice is a riveting and revealing portrait of the troubled genius who sparked an international chess craze and captured the imagination of the world.
Distributor:
ACME FILM OÜ
Director:
Edward Zwick
Cast:
Peter Sarsgaard, Tobey Maguire, Liev Schreiber, Sophie Nélisse, Michael Stuhlbarg, Lily Rabe
