Highly Overrated But Still Good

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

This is a great documentary regarding Bobby Fischer although I must admit, I do not understand the obsession with this guy. Could it be that I am not a major Chess fanatic? This film leaves you wondering why would somebody so eccentric and so-unbalanced as this chess player - with many diagnosed and diagnosed (yet untreated tics/idiosyncrasies) turn Anti-Semitic and paranoid? Well - the same reason the average nutcase who doesn't happened to be a world champion chess player does - because . . . they are CRAZY.Given the history of grand master chess players - the better you get at chess - the closer you get to paranoid schizo - at least that's what I learned from this film.

Was Bobby Fischer the greatest chess player who ever lived? Probably, but as this HBO-produced documentaryreveals there was also a darker side to his genius. Drawing upon a wealth of fascinating archival footage, veteran documentary filmmaker Liz Garbus (Girlhood, The Execution Of Wanda Jean, etc) draws a complex portrait of the man, depicting him as stubborn, arrogant, obsessive and a temperamental but typically flawed genius who crumpled under enormous pressure. The portrait of Fischer is rounded out through a series of extensive and candid interviews with colleagues and those who knew him best. There is even an interview with a sad, pathetic and paranoid Fischer himself, filmed a couple of years before his death. Garbus traces his life from his first public appearances as a self-taught child prodigy, becoming US chess champion at the age of 15 and world champion in 1972, to his lonely death in Iceland in 2008 where the disgraced former champion was living in exile. The film spends a lot of time examining his challenge against Russian world champion Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, arguably the most famous chess match in history, looking at the psychological ploys Fischer used to rattle his opponent. The film also looks at the impact his victory had for the profile of chess in general, but the far more fascinating context of the Cold War paranoia against which the match was played is skimmed over. Following his victory Fischer's fragile mental state declined and he failed to deal with the public adulation that followed, and Garbus examines his tragic fall. The film unfolds in a somewhat conventional fashion, but it still makes for compelling viewing.

Bobby Fischer Against the World (2010) *** 1/2 (out of 4) Another very good documentary from HBO, this one taking a look at the life and career of Bobby Fischer, the chess genius who rose to fame at an early age and really put the sport on the U.S. map when he defeated the Russian Spassky in 1972. Fischer's rise was quickly put out when he refused to defend his championship and the genius spent the rest of his life trying to hide from the public and apparently driving closer to madness. David Edmonds, Dr. Anthony Saidy, Susan Polgar, Henry Kissinger, David Shenk, Malcolm Gladwell and Larry Evans are among the many people interviewed here as they try to explain what made Fischer a genius but also what eventually got him kick out of America. This is a very fascinating documentary because it really seems to be trying to tell the truth and not just sugar-coat some rather troubled moments in this man's life. It's clear that he was a genius at the game of chess and the documentary makes an interesting choice showing other great minds of the game who ended their lives in a mental breakdown. The majority of the running time is devoted to the Spassky match as we get a game-to-game breakdown of events, shown the important matches and also the various controversies that Fischer stirred up at the time. So, in reality, even in his greatest moments Fischer was still delivering controversy and upsetting people. Fans of chess, Fischer or those just interesting in great documentaries should really be entertained by this thing. The documentary doesn't really explain the rules of chess so some might want to read up a bit before going into the film but even if you know nothing the story is just so fascinating where it really doesn't matter.

Since this was meant to be a documentary about the life of Bobby Fischer I thought it was pretty interesting. I was introduced into the world of chess as a boy myself and haven't had a lot of time to improve my game being in college. I read Fischer's book on chess and learned how to play pretty well and beat some people that claimed they were good.The life of Bobby Fischer is nonetheless interesting yet sad because of the publicity he received in his life, in a way the thing he most cherished destroyed him, because once he reached the peak of his career, winning the world title, there wasn't really a peak above that. I thought it was pretty good though I'd recommend this movie to someone interested in chess at all will know the name Fischer.