The Bobby Fischer biopic Pawn Sacrifice seems to have been made not because someone had insight into the chess champion's character, but because someone realized Bobby Fischer was famous but didn't have a biopic yet. Directed with earnest blandness by Edward Zwick (Glory, The Last Samurai) from a script by Steven Knight (Eastern Promises), the film follows the standard biopic formula, starting with Bobby as an intense, precocious kid who becomes America's youngest chess champion—and then becomes a paranoid, temperamental adult played by Tobey Maguire.