Boaz Yakin, 1994.The film is a cliché 90’s urban ‘hip-hop’ drama with a distinctive twist, the protagonist is a twelve-year-old chess prodigy. Michael, whose nickname is Fresh, is an unassuming drug dealer that lives in a Brooklyn housing project. He lives in two drastically different realities. On the one hand, he is a typical healthy well-adjusted teenager, who spends his days goofing around with his friends, eating chocolate bars, and flirting with girls. On the other hand, he is well-known drug runner revered on the streets for his quick thinking and high intelligence. Sporadically throughout the film, Fresh meets with his father (Samuel L Jackson) for a game of chess in the park. During which he imparts snippets of parental wisdom between bouts of harsh scolding over unwise moves. For a while Fresh seems to manage his two separate lives. However as he gets deeper in the game, they begin to merge, bringing his school friends and family in danger. When his schoolyard crush is accidently murdered, he decides he wants out, devising an intricate plan to free him and his sister from the streets. One that includes sacrificing his friends and double-crossing essentially everyone he knows.
On the surface, the film is not great. It is not even good. The story is stale and uncreative. Most of the characters are incredibly annoying, with the exception of Samuel L Jackson. However, beneath the surface there are signs of intelligence. The idea that a game of chess is a metaphor for life, while simplistic, does give the film hope. Playing chess teaches Fresh to think multiple steps ahead of his opponents, to have redundancy in his plans to be able to adapt to new situations. In the game, the ultimate goal is to kill your opponent’s king, using your pieces as means to achieve your end. In the case of Fresh, the objective is survival for him and his sister, everyone else is just a means. In the case of his father, the game is a symbol of inner struggle, playing both sides of the board in an ongoing game that has lasted more than 20 years. When Fresh visits his father’s trailer, he remarks that he is losing the game against himself, to which he shrugs in acknowledgement. After the visit, Fresh decides to set up a similar game, playing both black and white pieces. In reality, playing both sides seriously would divide the self and likely result in a mental breakdown. However, as a metaphor in a film, it works. At the end of the story, Fresh knocks over his King to symbolize checkmate. He realizes that in this game there are no winners, and that by playing it he has ultimately reduced himself to level of his opponents. The final scene, which unbefitting to the overall atmosphere of the film, is quite beautiful, showing the young man sobbing uncontrollably as he sits down to play a game of chess with his father. While you will likely never see a ‘Criterion’ release of the film, it is a surprisingly intelligent and is definitely a ‘diamond in the rough’.
