SnoopyStyle
In 1972, two boys play in a tournament. The loser stabs the winner with a pen. The loser's life falls apart. The winner Peter Sanderson (Christopher Lambert) becomes a grandmaster. He's a single dad and a womanizer. His latest groupie is found dead. Capt. Frank Sedman (Tom Skerritt) and his loud-mouth partner Andy Wagner (Daniel Baldwin) investigate. Sedman is under political pressure to keep the tournament going. He brings in psychiatrist Kathy Sheppard (Diane Lane) to test Peter and she falls in love with him.This is trying way too hard to make chess cool. I have no problem with yet another dark serial killer movie. Daniel Baldwin is over-acting. Christopher Lambert is not good. None of the clues get the audience involved. It's a whodunnit in which nobody really cares about.
gridoon2018
"Knight Moves" is one of the better thrillers of the early 1990s. It has an attention-grabbing opening, it's atmospherically directed, well-plotted (with at least one admirably effective red herring - I was fairly certain about who the killer would be, but I was wrong), it avoids gratuitous gore, and the music score (by Anne Dudley) is terrific. The film almost plays like a precursor to "Seven" and the other "serial killer teasing the police with riddles" thrillers that followed. My only major reservation: Christopher Lambert is not entirely convincing as an international chess grandmaster, which is probably the reason the film does not really focus as much on chess itself as it may appear to at first. **1/2 out of 4.
michaeljhuman
I like Lambert, and he's the main reason I liked the movie. It's a pretty standard suspense movie. Keeps you guessing at times.IMDb says there's a factual error in one of his games. They say the problem is that there's a mate in 5, not a mate in 4. I don't agree. It's a mate in 5 for black (if played correctly by both sides, correctly meaning that white plays to avoid mate as long as possible.) The problem I see is that Lambert's coach suggests he can win with a mate in 5, and misses it. But Lambert is playing WHITE. His rook move to c2 is correct, but only in the sense that's the best move to delay an already lost game. The coach seems to imply HE can win the game, otherwise why say "he missed it"? But he can't win, his game is already lost.
teadm
The film had some suspenseful moments (the finale most of all), but I found the script, acting and direction rather mediocre. Even normally good actors like Tom Skerritt and Diane Lane give awkward performances, and Christopher Lambert's overwrought line delivery is often hilarious.**POSSIBLE SPOILER** The movie even pulls out the ultimate cliche: thunder and lightning during the critical climax and a killer with a "mommy" complex. Give me a break!. A for trying, C for the results.
