The Dark Horse

Based on a real guy and inspired by the 2003 documentary of the same name, writer/director James Napier Robertson's "The Dark Horse" chronicles the mentally ill New Zealand chess prodigy as he struggles to find an accepting community.

As a kid, Maori man Genesis Potini (mental institution-mohawked, gentle giant Cliff Curtis, wearing a spirit bag around his neck and pink Crocs on his feet) rises to fame as a successful speed chess player, yet his bipolar tendencies and accompanying mutterings land him in mental institutions, much like the piano prodigy in "Shine."

The movie opens with Genesis's latest discharge into the care of his cruel, dead-eyed, gang-banging brother Ariki (brooding, dreadlocked Wayne Hapi), who taught him chess during their childhood, but is now more interested in initiating his reluctant, fearful 15-year-old son Mana (James Rolleston) into his violent Vagrants posse than into making sure Genesis takes his lithium and finds a job.

Genesis ends up living in the streets of his poverty-infested Gisborne hometown, where he stumbles into an after-school program for at-risk youth. Like a "Bad News Kiwis," he starts The Eastern Knights chess club to teach a rag-tag group of marginalized kids to learn the brain game with hopes of entering the New Zealand Junior Chess Championship in Auckland. The group also celebrates their Ngati Porou heritage by performing the Haka war dance, among other arts, to raise money for their trip.

Genesis enfolds Mana into this ad hoc tribe as well, saving the boy from further beatings and scarifications, at least in the six weeks leading up to the tournament.

His gifted nephew and the other kids struggle with strategy and thinking a step ahead while Genesis fights hallucinations and ostracization when the local parents find out about his past. But his gambit to provide hope for others, despite the stability he longs for by lacks himself, pays off.

The biopic, which is subtitled in English when the local dialect is spoken, pays homage to overcoming personal and societal obstacles, and celebrates the real Potini, who died in 2011. It's a familiar story that finds new resonance coming from another culture, yet one also driven by violence, competition and the uncomfortable co-location of brilliance and madness.

Genesis asks each of his students to identify and claim a hand carved piece from his childhood chess set to bond as a team, and to be a talisman during their training. Despite his own challenges, Genesis chooses and eventually becomes the king, embodying his name of new beginning.