Plot
In 1962, at the height of the Cold War, President Kennedy warns that the USSR is preparing for war, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The first scene is the Grand Master chess match between the dazed American with blood on his hand who walks out to the already seated Russian.
Seven days earlier, the American chess player arrives home. As he enters, a car pulls up. Cutting to a bar scene, the chess player is in a poker game and switches off the news about the upcoming chess match between Soviet Alexander Gavrylov and the American Konigsberg. He wins, takes the money and receives his cut from the barman (who sets him up with weak players from whom he can easily win money).
Agent Stone approaches the chess player, whom she recognizes as Joshua Mansky, a brilliant mathematician and former champion chess player. Mansky walks out before hearing a proposal from her, is followed by Agent White and pushed into the back of a car. He is drugged and taken by plane to a US Embassy safe room. Head of the operation Agent Novak, debriefs the genius but volatile Mansky, who defeated Konigsberg twenty years ago.
To help in the winning of the Cold War, Mansky will have to compete in a chess tournament against Alexander Gavrylov in Warsaw, Poland, as American contender Konigsberg has died from a Soviet poisoning. Per tournament rules, Mansky is the only eligible substitute, as he was the last person to beat him – 17 years ago.
Mansky agrees to play, however, his extreme alcoholism brings him to be found unconscious in his hotel room. Amphetamines are used so he can officially present himself as the American replacement. Mansky is housed in the chess match's hotel venue Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw and meets hotel director Alfred Slega, also a drinker. General Krutov, Soviet counterintelligence, tells Slega to 'look after' Mansky.
Four days before the opening scene, Mansky recalls getting drunk with Slega in the morning and nothing else, including the first chess game, which he won in only 32 moves. His eccentric behaviour and alcoholism are connected to his sheer brilliance, as alcohol helps slow his brain so he can operate more normally.
The Russian general major meets Gavrylov, and encourages him to keep playing on despite losing the first match. He tells Slega to deny Mansy alcohol, however he continues to access it, smuggling it in from the Chess social evenings functions.
In the second game, a hypnotist blocks Mansky's thoughts so he concedes. Agent White pursues him out of the theatre, but is stopped by the Soviets who threaten his family and pregnant wife. Gift, a Soviet officer working with the Americans, is in the audience but Agent White doesn't know what he looks like.
Slega befriends Mansky, coming to him secretly through his wardrobe which connects to the lobby toilets, where he hides alcohol for him. He tells him about Soviet influence over Poland, and views the Warsaw Pact as a continuation of the German Nazi occupation. Together, they sneak in and out of the hotel through the sewer, and Mansky learns the city's topography through the Hotel Director like a chess board.
Slega possesses a little red communist party membership book that allows immunity from Soviet troop questioning. At a bar they meet many of his friends, who support Mansky in chess over Gavrylov, and are sympathetic to American values.
The next day Agent White visits Mansky’s Soviet-bugged room. He says Gift will approach him, a trustworthy man in a Soviet uniform with a scar on the back of his right hand, he then dies in Mansky’s arms, poisoned.
Mansky calls Agent Stone, who asks him why Agent White visited him. Also he says the room is bugged, but she insists the room is clean. Mansky becomes distraught, so Stone takes him to the US embassy on medical grounds, where they brief him on the latest in Cuba. The third game is considered a draw due to his feigned illness.
'John Gift' is a high ranking Soviet officer and spy, whose only contact was Agent White. He was about to deliver the blueprints for the warheads in Cuba, when the Soviets stung the Americans with a mole. As Gift was coming to Warsaw for the tournament, the chess game is in fact a game within a game, so he can slip the Americans critical information about Soviet capabilities and intentions in Cuba.
Gift knows he can trust Mansky, so Agent Stone tells him he will get the blueprints' microfilm from him, hidden in a champagne cork. Therefore Mansky has to make the next game a draw, so the Soviet delegation comes to the after-match social event.
General Krutov tells a staff member that American democracy discriminates against women and Blacks, and perpetuates social economic inequality, forcing poorer nations to give the USA their riches, waging war against those who don't. Mansky tells Agent Stone about his regretable aid in helping Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project to create nuclear weapons.
During the fourth game, Mansky looks to the audience often during the game, obviously distracted, speculating who might be John Gift. In a break he goes to the lobby toilets to have a drink, whereupon Gift enters his cubicle and hands him a cork. Agent Stone then follows, telling Mansky to keep it despite his offering it to her. Then both she and Gift are killed in the toilet by a man in Soviet uniform.
Mansky returns to the game, the opening scene of the film. His brain, transformed by the alcohol, switches on and he proposes a draw. His opponent disdainfully turns this down, believing Mansky is in a bad position. When Mansky makes a series of quick moves and countermoves, the increasingly frustrated Gavrylov accepts his next proposal for a draw, squaring the series 2-2.
When Mansky asks to return to the US embassy, he is told the American delegation are quarantined in the hotel. He goes back to his room, and doesn't attend the usual social event after the match, although the Soviet delegation and Gavrylov do.
When Slega smuggles alcohol out of the event and into Mansky’s room via the secret entrance, Mansky asks him for help. Knowing the room is bugged, Slega turns up the radio loudly. Saying he cannot escort Mansky out, but gives him the red book, and says to make sure the Soviets can't trace it back to him if he gets caught. Mansky escapes into the city via the secret passageways to head to the US embassy.
24 hours from a Cuban confrontation, in the US embassy safe room, Mansky recounts the events to Agent Novak – and says that Gift killed Stone before she could kill him. Gift gave him another cork, and soaked the false one in Stone’s blood, to help him identify it. He then told Mansky to remember the word Rakirovka. It still is not clear to Novak whether Stone is the spy or not, and he has four hours to give President Kennedy a decision on whether to place a blockade around Cuba or not. Mansky is not sure who to trust, as Agent White did not tell Novak about the scar on Gift’s hand either.
Novak tells Mansky that the cork soaked in Stone’s blood says the nuclear weapons are ready; the second one Gift suggests the Soviets are bluffing. President Kennedy wants to communicate with Mansky by secure telegram, who wonders whether Gift is not on the American’s side at all. Using a riddle, Mansky passes a message to the President, and Kennedy announces a blockade of ships to Cuba containing offensive material. Mansky tells Novak to thank Gift.
General Krutov and the Soviets find the dead bodies in the lobby toilet, and he discovers Mansky’s secret is alcohol, realizing that Slega must have befriended Mansky. Novak tells Mansky that Rakirovka means castling, meaning imminent danger. Krutov realises with Kennedy’s announcement that the Soviets have lost this battle, and orders a search for the spy in their midst, and for Slega to be summoned to him, who he tortures, as he knows Slega put Mansky in the room with the secret passage, and is sympathetic to America.
At the fifth and deciding game, Mansky sees Gift outside in the lobby. A man in Soviet uniform is then seen exiting the hotel, who is actually Mansky, whilst Gift uses Slega's red book to leave the quarantined hotel in Mansky’s clothes. Novak rushes into the alley and stops Krutov from killing Mansky as he is protected by diplomatic immunity. Mansky forfeits the final game, so Gavrylov wins the tournament.
When Novak flies Mansky back to the USA, he is accused of having humiliated the country, despite his secretly preventing a nuclear war. Novak tells him he's a citizen hero and will be looked after, hands him a hip flask and exits the car. Gift gets in and gives him Slega’s red book, as he was killed. Although Novak wants to take care of them, Mansky insists he wants no part of it.
Talks between the US and the Soviet Union ultimately result in mutual deescalation. Later nuclear arms control agreements such as the INF Treaty and assistance with Eastern Bloc nuclear disarmament after the Revolutions of 1989.
However, in the epilogue, in 2019 Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin announce the suspension of the INF treaty and will develop new intermediate-range ballistic missiles.
Release
The film premiered on September 18, 2019 at the 44th Gdynia Film Festival[9] to positive critics' reviews[10] and was released in Polish theaters on November 8, 2019.
The international release was planned for early 2020.[11]
It was released globally via streaming on February 8, 2020 through Netflix.[12]
Critical response
Writing for the Chicago Reader, Jamie Ludwig said: "You'd expect a film that involves espionage and a high-stakes chess tournament during the height of the Cold War to leave you on the edge of your seat. But then there's The Coldest Game. Bill Pullman (who stepped into the lead role after the original actor William Hurt was injured just before production began) gives a fantastic performance as Professor Joshua Mansky... kidnapped by government agents and brought to Warsaw to compete against the Russians at chess after their first pick was murdered. However, Pullman alone can't make up for a premise that never completely gels, immemorable characters (Robert Więckiewicz as the Palace of Culture and Science director is a welcome exception), and loads of cliches. A few moments of dark humor beg to transform the film into a Vonnegut-type satire - it might have been better served had it been steered in that direction."
In a 2 stars out of 4 review, Roger Moore from Movie Nation wrote: "I'm a sucker for a good Cold War thriller. A middling one? Yeah, I'll sit through one of those, too. The Coldest Game falls in the latter category... The whole affair - again, fictional - is a jumble of U-2 flights and intrigues, "quiet" rooms (bugs are everywhere) and booze. Pullman keeps up with it all, but he lost me here and there. But the Mid-Century Soviet fashion, furniture and design is properly gloomy... The performances are solid even when the story is at its most convoluted. And there are third act twists that atone for some of what's lacking in the first two."
Demetrios Matheou from the Screen Daily wrote: "This Cold War thriller [...] features a fruity premise and respectable talent on either side of the camera [...] And yet the end result of what is a clearly enthusiastic enterprise is remarkably average." He noted that the potential of a movie combining "spy intrigue, the historical crisis and the renowned temperament of the chess elite", obviously evoking the Fischer-Spassky match, was wasted. He had some praise for Pullman and Więckiewicz's performances and found the scenes depicting the pair's drunk escapade "effective", but also stated the chess matches were "a botched business, presented with no logic or tension". "A clunky script and endemic hyperactivity in all departments results in the kind of film that is more guilty pleasure than edge-of-seat thriller".
John Serba, writing for the Decider, gave the movie a negative review, centering his critism on Pullman's character, which he considered cartoonish and hammy. "A couple of the twists [...] are pretty good. The movie is reasonably strong down the stretch as it meets but doesn't surpass expectations of its genre. It's slickly produced in the sense that it has the clean, digital look of a production with a low budget that's trying to look expensive. It's fine. But the movie hinges on Pullman", whose "characterization of a hopeless boozer is so far over the top, it makes Charles Bukowski look like Ned Flanders. His character as written is thin-shaved lunch meat, and he just stacks up the ham."
Common Sense Media, which rates movies based on their family-friendliness, gave the movie 1 out of 5 stars because of high amounts of violence (4/5), language (4/5) and drinking, drugs and smoking (5/5).
Based on these five reviews, the film holds an approval rating of 0% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 3.5/10.[13]
Relationship to real events
Cuban Missile Crisis
An important question in the movie is whether the Soviets already have nuclear warheads in Cuba, or are yet to ship them to Cuba. As told by Soviet general Gribkov in 1992[14] (and repeated in the 2003 book Wilson's Ghost by McNamara & Blight), Soviet forces in Cuba at that point did have nuclear warheads there: 162 of them, including at least 90 tactical nuclear warheads; these warheads were just 90 miles from US shores. Furthermore, on October 26, 1962, the warheads were moved from their storage sites to positions closer to their delivery vehicles (missiles), to be launched in case of American invasion. According to McNamara, the Americans did not believe Soviet warheads were already in Cuba;[15] if both Gribkov and McNamara are telling the truth, then the Americans decided on the course of action while not knowing how real the threat was.
The last vodka
The method of killing shown in the movie, dubbed "the last vodka" in the movie - injecting alcohol directly into the victim's bloodstream to fake accidental death from overdrinking - has long been alleged to be used by former communist secret service operatives in Poland to eliminate opponents and witnesses (or to perform example killings to scare others into silence). These allegations came mainly from anti-communists, including members of the opposition from the times when Poland was a one-party authoritarian communist state. A notable example is Sylwester Zych, a priest whom the Milicja Obywatelska blamed for the death of one of their own. In 1989, S. Zych died, officially from alcohol poisoning, but surprisingly the concentration of alcohol in one of his arms was much higher than elsewhere in his body, suggesting the alcohol was injected in the arm, not taken orally.[16]
