'Pawn Sacrifice' takes all of those tropes and cranks them up to 11, far past the barometers of either believable human behavior or credible filmmaking.

Like all of Zwick's works, it's perfectly watchable fare, but it's often infuriating for its refusal to dig deeper into its incredibly compelling subject.

Fine-looking but safe ...

Edward Zwick and Tobey Maguire conspire to bring life to the dark side of chess prodigy Bobby Fischer, resulting in an unusually entertaining account of paranoia, celebrity and sporting.