29 Jun 2017

Pawn Sacrifice (USA, 2014)

Pawn Sacrifice (USA, 2014)

Director: Edward Zwick.  Stars: Tobey Maguire, Liev Schreiber, Peter Sarsgaard...

Based on the famous chess match for the World Championship which happened in 1972 in Reykjavík, Iceland. It's still the Cold War, and American chess player Bobby Fischer plays against the Soviet Union's Boris Spassky in a tense match.

In the movie, Spassky (Liev Schreiber) plays pinball in an open-24-hours joint, a Stampede (Stern*, 1977)...


A limo pulls up and his comrade gets out... we can see the reflection of the pinball cabinet in the window...

His comrade scolds him for disappearing and convinces him it's best that he get back to their hotel to rest up for the big match the next day. Spassky tells him that it's his shot, but his comrade just plunges the ball and walks away disdainfully...

This is another example of pinball anachronism, since the machine was made 5 years after the event depicted in the movie.

One would expect pinball machines to be rather rare in Iceland due to high import duties and its remote location. Pretty much all of them were brought in for R & R purposes by the US military when they maintained a base there (so it's a little doubtful that one would be in a bar as depicted in this movie). Nowadays there are only about 60 machines in the entire country. Here's a little article about Keeping pinball alive in the land of fire and ice.

* It's possible that this was made by Chicago Coin. Stern took them over in December 1976 and continued to produce the title.