Tobey Maguire is Chess Master Bobby Fischer in the 'Pawn Sacrifice' Trailer

Truly great movies about chess don't come around often. Easily the best, and a personal favorite of mine, is Searching for Bobby Fischer, which told the story of child prodigy Josh Waitzkin. I also have a soft spot for crime flick Fresh, and the little-seen drama The Luzhin Defence. For the most part, every chess film manages to incorporate Bobby Fischer's life in some way, but now his story if being properly told in Ed Zwick's Pawn Sacrifice, starring Tobey Maguire as the eccentric chess master.

Debuting at Sundance earlier this year, the film chronicles Maguire's epic chess matches against Soviet champion Boris Spassky (Liev Schreiber) at the height of the Cold War. It's a story that has been told many times before, mostly in documentaries, but this looks like a thrilling narrative account of Fischer's meteoric rise to fame and the personal price he paid for it. Here's the synopsis:

In a gripping true story set during the height of the Cold War, American chess prodigy Bobby Fischer (Tobey Maguire) finds himself caught between two superpowers when he challenges the Soviet Empire. Also starring Liev Schreiber and Peter Sarsgaard, Pawn Sacrifice chronicles Fischer's terrifying struggles with genius and madness, and the rise and fall of a kid from Brooklyn who captured the imagination of the world.

Pawn Sacrifice makes the opening move on September 18th.