Rating: 13/20
Plot: Aleksandr [sic] Luzhin is a brilliant and passionate chess player but has almost no ability to live any semblance of a normal life beyond the 64 squares of a chessboard or interact with anybody not made of wood. That is until he meets Natalia, the eccentric-lovin' daughter of wealthy parents, during the preliminaries of a chess tournament in Italy. She's attracted to his erratic genius; he wants to get in her pants. Or nudge her with his bishop, promote his pawn, exploit her flanks, have her mount his knight, etc. Will his obsessions get in the way of his newfound happiness and his ability to win the tournament? And what about the bearded guy?
I had to give a bonus point because the chess was real. The play of the grandmasters might not have looked real. They played awfully fast, but of course, nobody wants to sit around watching characters pondering moves over a chess board for the time it would take to make it realistic. I almost always enjoy Turturro, and I like him here as the obsessive genius type he plays so well (see, Barton Fink). The other characters are all pretty flat, and the antagonist's motivation doesn't make a lick of sense to me. The ending was unexpected, but not necessarily in a good way. Actually, the last fourth of the movie was a flurry of plot twists and silliness that butted heads with the reflective tone of the first three-fourths. I should admit that I did at least like the characters enough to get a little emotional and tear up a little at the end.
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