Chess N the Hood (ACJ 3)

Chess N the Hood: A Review of Fresh

Jamie Hamilton

Fresh
Written and directed by Boaz Yakin
Starring Sean Nelson, Giancarlo Esposito, Samuel L. Jackson
Miramax Films, 1994, 115 minutes, rated R
Available on video

Remember the pictures of little Sammy Reshevsky in his sailor suit, beating a roomful of grown men at their own game? Somehow it didn't seem possible, but there it was. Fresh, a modern-day prodigy of the drug world, just as improbably beats a neighborhood full of drug dealers at their own game, sending most of his opponents to a fiery death and checkmating his chief rival at the tail-end of a risky, complicated combination.

Fresh isn't exactly a chess movie, but the game permeates the film from the opening sequence, in which the Brooklyn cityscape is set up building by building, like pieces being put onto an empty board. The title character (played by Sean Nelson) is a twelve-year-old boy already heavily involved in the drug trade, though he's not a user himself. Even at such a young age, Fresh is forced to choose between two continuations: the risky Crack Gambit, and the more solid Heroin Variation. The latter, claims his mentor, a dealer played effectively by Giancarlo Esposito, is "a gentleman's operation ... like banking, only it's more secure."

The overt chess element of the movie is Fresh's father Sam, an alcoholic chess hustler (played by Samuel L. Jackson) who isn't supposed to have contact with the boy, though they meet secretly in Washington Square Park for lessons. Jackson, best known for his later role in Pulp Fiction, gives by far the best performance of the movie, with his constant patter of bravado and advice. "Put the clock on Fischer, I'll chew his ass up," he boasts, conveniently ignoring that Fischer was a powerful blitz player. He actually mentions the names of real grandmasters, making the dubious claim, "Benko, Botvinnik, Keres ... I played 'em all."

Father and son, believe it or not, play legal moves from recognizable openings, such as the Sicilian and Two Knights defenses. But the film is marred by one bit of obvious nonsense: Sam is impressed when his son puts him in check. "That's the first time you checked me," he says admiringly, and offers to celebrate. This somehow slipped by the film's chess consultant Bruce Pandolfini--who, along with "grandmaster [sic] Walter Shipman," is named as one of the greats by the father.

Some of the chess-related action takes place in the father's hovel, a trailer in a run-down lot where he has several correspondence games (and one game with himself) going on full-size boards. Here we see a bulletin board crammed full of chess clippings and photos, including the cover of American Chess Journal's premiere issue. We even see a full-screen closeup of the cover, given prominence apparently because of its excellent photo of Fischer.

When it was first shown, Fresh generated controversy--not for the "checking" scene or product placement, of course--but because its writer/director, Boaz Yakin, is not black. He was accused by some of exploiting the ghetto for profit. Critics do have a point in that the film is full of stock 'hood characters and hackneyed scenes, much as chess always has the same pieces, which always move the same ways. But this set is also missing a few pieces. Actress N'Bushe Wright, who plays Fresh's drug-addicted older sister, comes from Brooklyn herself. In an interview after the movie's Washington, DC premiere, she noted, "I grew up in a home with a mother and a father. That film is not me."

The relentless brutality of the film is numbing. Middle-school kids shrug off the killing of their friends like blitz players sacrificing pawns. Two of the saddest scenes involve Fresh's friend Chuckie, who turns his pet dog into a killer to make some pocket money in a dog fight and later gets himself killed through an overdose of teenage bluster and bravado.

I don't know how people really talk in Brooklyn, but much of the dialogue seems forced, as though the writer is trying to throw in as many hip words as possible. Sometimes it's hard to understand what they're saying at all, in part because the sound quality isn't perfect. And most of all, the acting is not very exciting, contributing to the flat feeling of the film.

The final third of Fresh is the long, bloody combination in which Fresh sacrifices every piece but the queen and ends with a tidy checkmate. The father, a "psychological player," pops up to give tips that apply more to the plot than to chess. "Some people love the queen," he advises. "Tease them ... they can't think about their game." He also advises Fresh to be more calm on the defense. His most important advice of all is hardly uplifting: "Chess ain't fun, boy. How many times I gotta tell you that?"

People are not chess pieces. Chess may be a violent game, but no one gets killed. Boaz Yakin treats his characters a little too abstractly, a little too much like mere pawns whose individual fates are irrelevant. Ultimately I must agree with those who say that Fresh is a bit hackneyed and manipulative. After all, if you were one of the pieces in a chess game, wouldn't you feel exploited?

Jamie Hamilton is a USCF master who has written for Chess Life and many other publications. His review of Knight Moves was published in ACJ 1.

This article appears in ACJ 3 (1995), pp. 103-105.