Knight Moves (1992)

User Rating:

5.8/10   

Director:

Carl Schenkel

Writer (WGA):

Brad Mirman (written by)

Release Date:

22 January 1993 (USA)

Genre:

Mystery | Thriller

Tagline:

In a game of life and death... one wrong move could be his last...

Plot:

A chess grandmaster is in a big tournament, and when his lover is found painted up and the blood drained out of her body he becomes a chief suspect...

Plot Keywords:

Chess | Serial Killer | Super Mario | Beautiful Woman | Throat Slitting

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Christopher Lambert	...	Peter Sanderson
Diane Lane	...	Kathy Sheppard
Tom Skerritt	...	Capt. Frank Sedman
Daniel Baldwin	...	Det. Andy Wagner
Codie Lucas Wilbee	...	David, 9 Years Old
Joshua Murray	...	Peter, 14 Years Old (as Josh Murray)
Frank C. Turner	...	Doctor
Don Thompson	...	Father
Megan Leitch	...	Mother
Alex Diakun	...	Grandmaster Lutz
Ferdy Mayne	...	Jeremy Edmonds (as Ferdinand Mayne)
Katharine Isabelle	...	Erica Sanderson (as Katherine Isobel)
Mark Wilson	...	Newscaster
Kehli O'Byrne	...	Debi Rutlege
Blu Mankuma	...	Steve Nolan

Also Known As:

Face to Face
Knight Moves (Germany)
Knight Moves - Ein mörderisches Spiel (Germany)

Runtime:

108 min | Spain:113 min | Argentina:116 min

Country:

Germany | USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby SR

Certification:

Singapore:M18 | Iceland:16 | Argentina:16 | Australia:M | Canada:14 (Nova Scotia) | Canada:16+ (Quebec) | Canada:PA (Manitoba) | Canada:R (Ontario) | France:-12 | Germany:16 (f) | Spain:13 | UK:18 | USA:R

Filming Locations:

Bavaria Filmstudios, Geiselgasteig, Grünwald, Bavaria, Germany

Company:

Cineplex Odeon Films

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: When Erica is shown playing Super Mario Brothers 3 on a PC, the moves she makes with the joystick as well as her keyboard tapping are inconsistent with what is shown on the PC monitor. In the next scene, she moves away from the PC but the game is still playing by itself.

Quotes:

Kathy Sheppard: You couldn't find your dick in a windstorm.

Movie Connections:

Features Super Mario Bros. (1985) (VG)

Soundtrack:

I Put A Spell On You

Not as clever as the set-up suggests but still an OK genre film

Peter Sanderson is a chess master in town for a major tournament. After visiting her and having sex with her, Sanderson's casual lover is murdered and left in a strange pose. The police suspect him as the person who was with her moments before her death but things are confused when Sanderson is contacted by the killer wishing to play a game with him. The murders continue as Sanderson and the police try to outsmart the killer – however clues still indicate that Sanderson could still be a suspect himself.

There are very few thrillers that would chose to set themselves in the world of grandmaster chess as the basis for their plot, and even fewer that would manage to pull it off convincingly; this film falls into the former but not the latter. The plot only really uses chess as the background so that it can make a rather tenuous link between that game and the game that is played between Sanderson and the killer. This basic plot is interesting enough even if it doesn't really stand out from the basic video-thriller genre that the chess connection suggests it is better than. The chess connection doesn't really work as it doesn't actually fit in with the murders very well – feeling forced quite a lot; certainly the whole chess championship is just a side issue and the film never manages to actually convince that this is a battle of wits, in fact the police do most of the leg work and Peter only occasionally blurts out the odd 'Eureka in the bathtub' line.

The solution is semi-clever in that I realized that the film had tricked me from the first scene onwards, but, despite this fact, the identity of the killer is as out-of-the-blue and you would expect it to be. The film is littered with minor characters who jump out of shadows, appear at suspicious times or say menacing things under their breath, all red herrings of course but most of them are not explained and it is obvious the writer never thought about whether or not they made sense in any context other than them being red herrings. Having said that, the film is enjoyable but mainly as a genre film rather than anything clever or particularly inventive. The lack of a really clever cat'n'mouse game was a letdown for me because of the potential that the chess connection had suggested.

The cast are a fairly average mix that contribute to the feeling that this is a genre film rather than anything particularly clever. Lambert has had a very mixed career and this is just another strange role that he doesn't play that well – certainly the words 'Lambert' and 'chess master' are words that words that don't seem to naturally appear together. Sticking with the clichés of both the genre and Lambert films, we get the obligatory love scene (twice!) that have little relevance but gives the film the added selling point of breasts! Skerrit and Baldwin are better than the rest of the cast even with poor characters – the two of them control each scene they are in and make the film feel better than it is.

Overall, the title and background suggest a clever game of wits between a chess master and the killer but it doesn't manage to be anything more than an OK genre film. The twist is out of the blue as always but getting there is quite fun and the end result is a film that is enjoyable but quite unspectacular.