PAWN SACRIFICE Review

From the opening frames it is clear that Pawn Sacrifice looks to analyze and discuss the psychology of this young man who would become the worlds greatest chess player. From a screenplay written by Steven Knight (Locke) and directed by Ed Zwick (The Last Samurai, Blood Diamond) we are introduced first thing to an eight year-old Bobby Fischer (Aiden Lovecamp) in Brooklyn who is already being positioned by his Russian mother, Regina (Robin Weigert), to look out the windows for spies and people who might be on the trail of her cause. Apparently she is some type of activist as she's already had her son and daughter, Joan (Sophie Nélisse of The Book Thief), rehearse what they are to say if someone asks them about her. It is an initial state of fear and suspicion that Bobby seems to never be able to shake. The fact he is to become the most famous chess player in the world, used as something of a pawn himself in the political dealings between the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, only intensifies this paranoia that causes his mental health to fall apart faster than a watermelon in the hands of Gallagher. Of course, what has to be considered is how much this nurturing state and how much Fischer's love for chess both influenced his eventual mental state. By the time Fischer was twelve years-old (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick) in 1955 he was already something of a prodigy, the U.S. chess champion as well as already beginning to push his mother, and almost everyone else, out of his life. The basis for who he would become was already there, but this inability to separate the game of chess from his identity and thus the the inability to look at the world any different than he would a chess board somewhat forced Fischer to succumb to the tone of the game and live his life in that timbre. Needless to say, this constant state of delusion becomes taxing on both Fischer and those around him, but dammit if it isn't fascinating to see unfold through the glass door.

THE BOOK THIEF Review

Not being familiar with the Markus Zusak novel from which this film was adapted I had no real knowledge of what I was getting into with The Book Thief. I'd avoided the trailer for the most part after hearing it was a horrible representation of the actual film and that it contained more than cheesy voiceover that made it feel like a trailer put together in the early 90's, but walking out of the film I still wasn't sure what to make of what I'd just witnessed. There is nothing that struck me in a way where I knew I would be thinking about the film for days afterward, but it became extremely clear over the course of the film that lead actress Sophie Nélisse was a true talent to watch and that if there was anything about this little film that might prove to be its mainstay it would be that it introduced the world to a great young actress that could very well go on to become exceptional. That isn't to say there is nothing else about the film that isn't interesting or worth talking about because in all actuality The Book Thief is a very solid picture, a kind of movie we don't get to see all that often these days because lines have been drawn in the sand that have categorized audiences to a point that telling the story of war, and specifically World War II Germany, from the perspective of a child would no doubt be looked at as something that doesn't fit squarely into any pre-determined demographic. Director Brian Percival (Downton Abbey) is lucky to have Zusak's 2006 book as a point of interest though as it has garnered interest in his vision of bringing the story of Liesel to the big screen and though it may not leave a huge cultural impact it is with ease that I say we are more fortunate than not having been given the opportunity to meet her. Nélisse's Liesel is our surrogate into late 1930's Germany up through to the end of the war and while the film doesn't tend to go with any of the typical trappings you might usually see coming from a film concerning Hitler and his minions what it does instead is give us pure insight into the day to day of what it was like to live during that time. In a constant state of fear, in worry of smiling too often or even stimulating ones mind by reading. While this all may sound like familiar ground and in some sense it is, The Book Thief is also a film that delivers a wonderful set of performances wrapped in a historical context that will do you no harm in coming to understand it a little better. That, and my wife absolutely loved it so take my words with a grain of salt as she's typically more in tune with what is genuine quality, if I do say so myself.