Saturday 4 August 2018

At least they got the characters names right (sort of)

I caught the movie 'Pawn Sacrifice' on TV this evening, having not seen it in it's entirety before. When I saw the initial trailers for the movie (when it was first released) I thought that the movie had made a reasonable attempt at historical accuracy. It turns out that 'reasonable' significantly oversells the accuracy of the movie.
To be fair, it is a movie, and not a documentary, but almost every dramatic scene in the movie presented an alternative version of history. Venues were changed, opponents were different, tournament results altered, and even well known facts (at least to chess players) were sacrificed for dramatic alternatives. While this often happens in film, a lot of the changes seemed unnecessary, as the truth would have served just as well.
As a movie I'd probably give it 6/10, but as a chess movie I would rate it significantly lower.


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