The politics of playing chess in movies

Arts admin July 24, 2026 0 Comments

What does the standard issue chess player in the movies look like?

In the 2020 real-life competition drama “Critical Thinking,” Mr. Martinez (John Leguizamo) tells the high school students he coaches that “Chess is the great equalizer.” He means that, despite his Black and brown players’ impoverished situation, and the stereotypes people assume about them, they are on equal footing with the poshest white prep school students when they sit down at that chess board. By beating those teams, they would upstage the naysayers who imply they lack the mental capacity for such a strategic game.

I thought about “Critical Thinking” when I saw the recent Netflix documentary, “Queen of Chess.” That film is about Judit Polgár, the Hungarian chess prodigy who became the greatest female player — and one of the overall best — in history, winning major championships in the ‘90s and 2000s. Several talking heads in directorRory Kennedy’s feature arguethat chess is a man’s game, and that women don’t have the mental capacity for it. Of course, Polgár showed them. Anya Taylor-Joy’s Netflix series “The Queen’s Gambit,” in which her fictional character rises to the top as a chess champion, may have put the argument to bed on a series level as well.

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Leguizamo could have directed a formal documentary about the five Miami-area Black and Latino men who won the US National Chess Championship in 1998. Instead, he chose to do a straight narrative feature. In the press kit, Leguizamo said he took the job as actor and director because there were very few representations of Latino people in movies when he was growing up, especially positive ones. Fictionalized versions of true stories allow for a level of emotional and dramatic license that nonfiction filmmaking does not; I think audiences respond to that overall effect more easily.

In the case of chess, however, the choice to fictionalize the story becomes a bit of a sticky situation because race becomes ashorthand in movies featuring Black and brown protagonists. Picking up the game of chess immediately tags the underprivileged minority characters not only as smart, but also as aberrations. This always struck me as ridiculous. I grew up around chess players who looked like me. My uncle, a chess champion in his undergrad days, taught me and my cousins (and whipped us mercilessly at it until we learned the game) when I was 5 years old.

In my three star review of “Critical Thinking,” I posed the question that opens this notebook. Though Leguizamo’s film is telling a true story, I wrestled with the thought that the film inadvertently perpetuated that “brown but smart” chess shorthand I believed I kept seeing in movies. I concluded that I may have been unfair in that judgment, but I really appreciated the film for forcing me to debate my own cinematic biases.

So what exactly does the standard issue central casting chess player protagonist look like in movies? Perhaps it’s Max Pomeranc in Steven Zallian’s 1993 drama, “Searching for Bobby Fischer.” One of two great movies Zallian wrote in 1993 (he also wrote “Schindler’s List”), the film is based on a real-life chess prodigy named Joshua Waitzkin. Pomeranc plays him as a kid here, pushed by his loving father (Joe Mantegna) and mentored by two chess players: Bruce, a chess tutor, played by Ben Kingsley and Vinnie, played by Laurence Fishburne.

Though he fits into that shorthand I’m complaining about, Vinnie, who plays speed chess in Washington Square Park, still intrigued me. Back in my earliest tech career days on Wall Street, guys like Vinnie would air me out and take my money in the speed chess games I played in a nearby park on my lunch hours. The film contrasts its disheveled Black character’s unorthodox methods with Kingsley’s stricter strategies, but ultimately concludes that Vinnie is the better mentor. As usual, Fishburne is excellent here (everyone is first rate in this movie).

I was far more aggravated by a recent revisit to 1994’s “Fresh,” even if I acknowledge that it’s still watchable if taken as an urban fable rather than a realistic depiction of its titular character’s existence. There was nothing unusual to me about seeing Black and brown people playing chess. “Fresh” sought to make me think otherwise.

This movie is a walking catalogue of hood stereotypes. Sam Jackson is also a speed chess player in Washington Square Park, but unless you’re that Los Angeles interviewer who mistook Jackson for Laurence Fishburne in an ad, you’re not going to confuse his character with the one in “Searching for Bobby Fischer.”

Fresh sells drugs (stereotype alert!) and hatches a plan to extricate himself and his sister from the clutches of street life. Jackson plays his alcoholic speed chess master father, who uses their daily games to teach his son lessons in strategy. As the film progresses, we realize Fresh is, to use that stupid term, “playing three-dimensional chess.” You ever notice that, in real life, that statement is always reserved for white politicians who are doing the dumbest things possible but getting away with them simply because they have power? Well, here’s a more convincing example of chess strategy in action.

A movie that doesn’t fall into the stereotype — because its director refuses to allow it — is the underseen 2016 Disney gem, “Queen of Katwe.” This true story features a female protagonist, a 10-year old Ugandan named Phiona (a superb Madina Nalwanga), who learns chess from an ordinary missionary, Robert Katende (an equally good David Oyelowo), and becomes a champion. Lupita Nyong’o is powerful yet understated as Phiona’s mother.

The film is a kindred spirit to “Critical Thinking” in challenging what the movies think a chess player should look like. Director Mira Nair (a.k.a. Mayor Mamdani’s mom) always brings dignity and grace to her impoverished characters, so at no point do we feel that Phiona or Robert is an example nor an aberration. They’re just regular people who earn our cheers and empathy. I love this movie more every time I watch it.

I just learned that Michael B. Jordan is starring in and directing the second remake of “The Thomas Crown Affair.” That film has perhaps the most famous chess game in cinema history, a sexy bit of foreplay between Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway. I look forward to the remake’s take on that scene. Considering Jordan’s sizzling charisma and undeniable talent, perhaps he is what the standard issue chess player should look like in the movies.