A highly competitive movie, at least insofar as its subject matter. That it deals with the World Chess Championship ensures it a degree of the dramatic tension inherent in any sports event, and that the competitors are an aging, ailing Soviet Jew and a temperamental, somewhat paranoid Soviet defector ensures it ideological tension too. Most American sports fans will be less sensitive to melodramatic distortions here than in, say, The Natural or one of the Rockys. The initial haggles over the weight of the chess pieces and the brightness of the lighting, followed by such ongoing psychological tactics as late arrivals and refusals to shake hands, seem all right. The Rasputinesque parapsychologist planted in the front row, the impending heart attacks (and rejuvenating serums), and the captive wife manipulated like a literal pawn are perhaps more dubious. But the eccentricities of chess champions have been well documented, as have the chicaneries of the Soviet government, and the exaggerations here do not lose all touch with reality. The ending, in some ways indecisive and unsatisfactory, nevertheless makes a nice pitch for the True Olympic Spirit such as we so often hear politics is threatening to snuff out. Michel Piccoli, Alexandre Arbatt, Leslie Caron, Liv Ullmann; directed by Richard Dembo. (1984) — Duncan Shepherd