Hi, Mystery Recapped here. Today I am
going to explain a Japanese psychological short thriller film called “Chess.”
Spoilers ahead! Watch out and take care!
In the opening scene, the World chess champion
Akira Kato is playing a match of chess against a computer called the Super Blue at the Special
Chess Exhibition. While Akira’s brain can only calculate three moves in a second, Super Blue
can calculate up to two hundred million moves per second. The chances of Akira’s winning seem
low, but if he loses, he will be the first player in history to lose to a computer. As the intense
game continues, he is visibly struggling. At last, he drops his king, accepting his defeat.
The room goes silent and no one can believe that the world’s most talented chess player,
who has never lost a single match, just lost to a computer. Akira sits with his head down,
not being able to process what just happened. The host mocks him as the audience laughs
and reporters click pictures of a humiliated former “grand world champion”. Akira bangs the
chessboard in anger, breaking it in half.
Three years have passed since the incident. After
the last match, Akira has stopped playing chess and no one has seen him ever since. The following
scene shows us many homeless people sitting on the side of the road on a cold morning. One of them
is Akira who has spent all his money on alcohol and gambling and is now living in the streets. A
fancy car stops by them and two men in black suits step out of it. They forcefully pick up Akira and
drive him away. He is taken to a mansion where he is welcomed by a wealthy old man. The man reveals
that he knows who Akira is, which is surprising considering he has changed his name and identity
entirely. When Akira inquires about who he is, the man says it isn't important. He simply wants
to play a game of chess with Akira. He reveals a chessboard on the table which makes Akira almost
puke. He composes himself and makes an excuse but the truth is that the thought of chess makes him
sick at this point in life. He turns away from the chessboard, not being able to look at it.
The old man says that he lost a lot of money betting on Akira’s last match. Since Akira doesn’t
have even a single penny, the man wants him to play a game to compensate for the loss. Akira is
unsure about the man’s actual intention but he knows he doesn’t want to do any business with him.
To get out of the situation, he bluntly tells the man that he doesn’t play chess anymore, moreover,
he doesn’t want to be a millionaire's plaything. The man picks up the king on Akira’s side and
says that he has lost without even playing. This reminds Akira of his last defeat which makes
him furious. He stops the man and asks him to move his pawn instead. Satisfied that he has finally
persuaded Akira, the old man plays his move. However, Akira refuses to turn towards the
chessboard or touch the pieces. Without even looking, he tells the man to move all of his
pieces, confident that he will win the game anyway. We notice that the old man is wearing an
earpiece and talking to someone while playing.
Akira walks to the window where he sees a group
of men downstairs wearing white and black clothes, and facing each other. The pattern they are
standing in is exactly the same as the pattern on the chessboard right now. As the old man
kills one of his pawns in the game, the man who was in the pawn’s place is stabbed and killed.
Akira freezes in shock at what he just witnessed. He asks the man if this is some kind of joke. The
man says that the pawns are mere soldiers so he shouldn’t be sad about one’s death. Akira runs
downstairs to check the dead person for himself and finds him on the ground while the other
players stand still in their places. He takes the knife out of the man’s body and sees that he is
still alive. Even on the verge of death, the man smiles and asks Akira what his next move is.
After the man takes his last breath, the players around him walk away, leaving Akira with a knife
and a dead body in the middle of the street. A woman sees him in the position and assumes
that he killed the person. Akira freaks out and retreats, stating that it wasn’t him. In the
following scene, he is at his former doctor, Seiichi Tomoda’s office. The doctor is surprised
to see him after so many years. He and Akira’s wife Kumi Kato have been looking for Akira for the
past three years. A flashback from three years ago shows us that after losing the game with Super
Blue, Akira had lost the will to live. He used to get nightmares of chess pieces trying to kill him.
The nightmares turned into hallucinations which made his health even worse. He had always compared
his life to a game of chess and his wife was his queen. So, when he lost the match, he left his
queen, believing he didn’t deserve her anymore. Akira tells the doctor about the incident earlier
and says he might be in need of a psychiatrist. The doctor assumes he dreamt of the guy being
killed but Akira insists what he saw was in fact real. The doctor asks him to go home and
rest because his mind is still fragile.
Following that, a printer at the doctor’s cabin
prints out a paper on its own. The paper says “what is your next move?”. Akira realizes that
the match of chess he started that morning is still going on. He shouts that he
wants his Pawn moved to the E3 position. Then, the doctor opens a book to see its pages
have turned into a chessboard. The printer prints another paper that says in the next move, the old
man’s queen kills Akira’s knight. The knight just so happens to be Doctor Tomoda. He vomits blood
and dies instantly. Akira is left shocked when he sees a picture of the doctor riding a horse
on the wall, meaning the doctor was his knight. The cup he was drinking from earlier, also has a
chessboard pattern, so Akira assumes the coffee was drugged. A nurse watches them through the door
but doesn’t do anything to save the doctor. She walks in only after he is dead and asks Akira what
his next move is. Akira runs outside, trembling in fear when he comes across a little kid holding a
drawing with the current format of the chessboard. It is clear that he is also involved in the
game when he asks Akira the same question.
Akira answers that he wants to move the king to
the E2 position. The kid tells him that the king will end up dead, making Akira run in the other
direction. He gets a vision of people who have died because of the game and starts hallucinating
chess pieces trying to kill him. As he runs away, he reaches a parking lot where the cars have been
parked in the format of the chessboard. Unknown to this, he gets in the car that is supposed to
be the bishop and tries to start it. However, similar to a bishop in chess, the car only moves
diagonally. He leaves that car alone and gets on the one that denotes the Rook. The car doesn’t
start because it is the opponent’s turn to play. The rook from the other side crashes into
his car, killing his rook. Following that, Akira goes to his old house only to see that it
is on sale. The rook, also known as the castle, was actually his house in real life. Now
that Akira gets the hang of real-life chess, he realizes that the queen is his wife Kumi and
her life is in danger as well. He goes back to the old man’s home claiming that he wants to quit
playing the game and asking for his wife.
However, the old man asks Akira to accept his
defeat and remove his king to end the game. This again reminds Akira of the time he was humiliated
after losing a match with the Super blue. With determination, he continues playing the
game and asks the old man to move his king forward. The game goes on for a long time and
most of their pieces are out. At last, Akira is only two steps away from winning the game and the
old man can do nothing to save his king. However, before he can play his turn, two men in suits
forcefully take him away. In the following scene, the old man and Akira are in a stadium that
has a life-size chessboard in the middle. The chess pieces are people who will die with a
single wrong move. The old man says that their situation is similar to an Arabian king who used
to play chess with his prisoners, killing them on the spot. He states that chess is a game
without emotion because the players sometimes have to sacrifice their own pieces in order to
win. For Akira to win the game, he will have to move a knight to checkmate. However, if he does
that, the old man will kill his queen. Akita turns around to see that the queen is actually his wife
Kumi who has been tied and held at knifepoint.
With tears in her eyes, she shakes
her head, asking Akira to save her. Now, Akira can either win
the game or lose his wife forever. He tries to move from his box to stop
the man but a sniper fires close to his legs, as a warning that moving will get him killed. The
old man asks him for the last time if he wants to sacrifice the queen or accept his defeat. He also
adds that a real champion would think logically and do what is needed to win the game. But Akita
tells them to save the queen without hesitation. His wife is more important to him than winning
a match. Everyone is shocked at his decision. He moves in front of her and spreads his hands,
accepting his defeat. The opposition Knight walks towards him with a knife and stabs him.
At last, Akira falls to the ground. However, after his death, the old man smiles and
claps for him in appreciation. Just then, Kumi’s hands are untied. She smiles while looking
at her husband’s body, clearly delighted with what just happened. More surprisingly, the man who
died in the first round, doctor Tomoda, the nurse, and everyone else that Akira met during the game
arrives at the arena while clapping for him.
Then, Akira gets up from the floor, confused as
to why he isn’t feeling any pain. It turns out that the knife he was stabbed with was fake.
It is then revealed that the game was a trick to get Akira out of his depressive episode and
make him play chess again. He had been in a worse mental condition since losing the last match
with Super blue. So, to help him get better, the doctor with Kumi and the old man orchestrated
the entire game as a part of “shock” therapy. The old man is actually the inventor of Super
blue. He wasn't happy that his creation had made a great chess player like Akira stop
playing. So to make up for his mistake, he organized and funded the game. This entire
time, Akira was playing with Super blue who had been passing answers to the old man through
his earpiece. The man reveals that the computer couldn’t comprehend Akira’s self-sacrificing move,
because of which it has malfunctioned. Meaning, that he has finally won a game against the Super
blue. The movie ends as Akira and his wife hug, while everyone else claps for them.
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