Here are review links for this film submitted by our members:
- Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan
- Excerpt: I think this is Tobey Maguire’s most accomplished performance, one where he gave it his all. It’s a pity that nearly everything else doesn’t keep up with Maguire.
- Jason Bailey @ Flavorwire
- Excerpt: The comic genius of ‘Pawn Sacrifice’ is how it takes all of the Troubled Genius Biopic tropes and cranks them up to 11, far past the barometers of either believable human behavior or credible filmmaking.
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice
- Excerpt: A call to speak out against the neglect of those with untreated mental illness.
- Francisco Cangiano @ CineXpress [Spanish]
- Tony Dayoub @ Cinema Viewfinder
- Excerpt: Fascinating as it is, Edward Zwick’s PAWN SACRIFICE misses the mark often enough to keep it from being a full-on masterpiece. On occasion though, this spare biography of tormented chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer (Tobey Maguire) and the performances of its dynamic ensemble cast are riveting.
- Mark Dujsik @ Mark Reviews Movies
- Excerpt: All of this, including the movie’s emphasis on these paranoid beliefs, might be true, but on a dramatic level, that emphasis leads to something more monotonous than insightful.
- Panagiotis Pete Gkaris @ Movies Ltd.
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Part bio-pic/part docudrama, it’s a serious, strategic glimpse of eccentric chess genius Bobby Fischer…
- Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: Pawn Sacrifice is undoubtedly a skillfully constructed docudrama. However for those hungry for a movie about chess and the intricacies of the game, they will be disappointed.
- Jared Mobarak @ The Film Stage
- Excerpt: Fischer’s life is shown as a war with himself. Strip away the Cold War overtones, agent/lawyer Paul Marshall’s (Michael Stuhlbarg) connections with the White House to position him as the patriotic story he’d become, and the mystique of the Russian game with Spassky at the lead and we have a lost young man drowning under his own expectations.
- Pat Mullen @ Cinemablographer
- Excerpt: Pawn Sacrifice nobly attempts to dramatize a landmark chess game between American Bobby Fischer (Tobey Maguire) and the USSR’s Boris Spassky (Live Schreiber), but its entire dramatic thrust hinges on one of the most tired clichés in the movies.
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: In cinematic terms, Zwick’s film may not possess the unhinged brilliance of its subject, but Fischer’s story–and Maguire’s committed portrayal of him–carry the day.
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