Scanialara You won't be disappointed!

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Hala Jaya This is a pretty mediocre treatment of Nabokov's book, a favorite of mine. It reminds me of "A Beautiful Mind" in the sense that it is more about the personal life of a genius than his doings, and it sometimes feels mundane for that reason.As Turati and Luzhin were portrayed, it recalls greatly Capablanca and Alekhine, respectively, and their encounters. Alekhine the unstable but brilliant, the only world champion to die with the title, and Capa the smooth talker in a trench coat, rock solid.For all the film's shortcomings, the puzzle of the adjourned position, which doesn't occur in the book, was a really nice composition.

guidecca It was riveting the first time and equally so the second time. I couldn't stand to miss one word. I guess I was hooked on it. It dwarfs A Beautiful Mind; I don't know how you rated that one. The movie leaves you excited about being obsessed with anything you really love. I think it was the story that grabbed me, not whatever failings someone is guessing the film has. The beauty of loving Sasha, someone who is NOT off the yuppie assembly line. However, the good-heartedness of the yuppie (the mother's choice). The good-heartedness of Sash's opponent. The evil of only one bad apple. Its a beautiful world that must exist outside of reality. Certainly outside the borders of my country. It is what movies do...make us dream and wish it could be true.

kevin c I fell asleep in the first half, that tells you a lot (about the film and my busy week at work). I woke up in the second-half, and to be fair so did the film.Turturro and Watson are fine exponents of the craft. Turturro especially has deserved top-billing for a long time. However, there's little chemistry between them, and this is a film about chess. The most un-cinematic sport there is.

wheck I'm not sure what the people who produce a movie like this are really thinking. Even though I can appreciate an adaptation that radically alters plot, setting, and dialogue (I'm thinking here of Robert Altman's "The Long Goodbye", which I've just recently seen), "The Luzhin Defence" tampers with the book's intelligence. Did the director and screenwriter think that Nabokov's characters were too boring? Didn't wear nice enough clothes? Talked too little? Or was the book not melodramatic enough for them? The combination, book and movie taken together, is itself something out of a Nabokov story; one detail of the story might have been the producers waiting for the author to die so that they could adapt his story in a way he would never have stood for.