PAWN SACRIFICE REVEALS THE LIFE AND DEATH OF BOBBY FISCHER
From the age of 4, Bobby Fischer (played by Toby Maguire) was obsessive/compulsive about chess, which was self-taught. Pawn Sacrifice, directed by Edward Zwick, follows his career up the day when he became world champ in 1972, defeating Boris Spassky (Liev Schreiber). Sheltered by his mother (Lily Rabe) as a child, his mental problem, including increasing paranoia, was accommodated by his sponsors until his potential for victory over Spassky became important in the Cold War, as egged on by Henry Kissinger, to symbolize American superiority. But his defiance of the Soviet boycott after 1979 resulted in a warrant for his arrest. Although his arrest and detention for many months in Japan is not featured in the film, titles at the end reveal his acceptance for political asylum by Iceland, where he lived with deteriorating mental health until his death in 2008. Pawn Sacrifice provides suspense to what many may incorrectly perceive as a game played without drama, albeit with a very odd film score that appears to explain Fischer’s maturation in an era of some social madness. MH
THE KEEPING ROOM IS UNKEPT
Touted at the beginning as an anti-war film, the plot reveals what happens when soldiers have guns and drink too much—violence for the hell of it. The black-and-white film is set in 1865, around the end of the Civil War. The soldiers, from the North, evidently believe that their mission is to wreak havoc on the South by pillage and violence despite the Lieber Code, which President Abraham Lincoln issued as a guide to avoid war crimes. Three children, meanwhile, live in an isolated farmhouse without their parents, evidently killed in the war, including the family slave Mad (played by Muna Otaru). Two renegade soldiers capture Augusta (Brit Marling) and put her in a makeshift prison, a room within a house (the keeping room). Augusta tries to break free, goes back home, mobilizes the other two children, including her younger sister Louise (Hailee Steinfeld), to be ready for the soldiers on a rampage, and has collected guns for their defense. But the action, directed by Daniel Barber, is so stilted and the dialog so muffled that filmviewers will easily fall asleep. MH
SICARIO IS TRANSLATED AS “HITMAN”
The secret “drug war” is featured in Sicario. Although audiences learn how to translate “sicario” into English through opening titles, they do not learn the identity or motivation of the hitman until the end of the film. When the action begins, FBI agent Kate Macer (played by Emily Blunt)assigned to kidnapping cases, is involved in a horrific discovery in Chandler, Arizona, near the Mexican border. Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), a CIA official wearing flipflops and jeans, observes her during the debriefing on the case and then recruits her to join a “task force” in the escalating war against drugs. Capture and interrogation of illegals, discovery of a tunnel, and the transfer of a captured suspect from México to the United States are accompanied by foreboding bass music as if important in that war. But the point of the film, directed by Denis Villeneuve, appears to be to demonstrate the excesses of that war through the Kate’s eyes, as she is upset that the CIA is doing what the FBI cannot—engage in torture and otherwise mistreat suspects while spending millions. Those selected for torture have children and wives, thus can be threatened with violence toward their loved ones. Kate is later informed that she is merely a prop: She has been recruited because the CIA cannot operate within the United States unless the FBI is part of that task force, consisting of dozens of men who appear sloppy and unprofessional. She also learns that the aim of the operation is to eliminate rival drug gangs, consistent with the approach taken in Colombia—create order by leaving just one gang in charge. During the operation she meets Alejandro aka Medellín (Benicio Del Toro), the hitman, whose role appears irrelevant to the main plot, which is an exposé masquerading as an action film in which most characters whisper at an almost inaudible level to create the impression that they are engaging in a secret operation. Stephen Soderberg’s Traffic (2000), in contrast, seems a picnic. MH