Jessica Chastain is better than ever as ‘poker princess’ Molly Bloom in Aaron Sorkin’s directorial debut Molly’s Game. Sorkin wrote the script himself, earning a deserved 2018 Academy Award nomination in the Best Adapted Screenplay category, but it is Chastain’s performance that elevates the picture. She can consider herself unfortunate to be overlooked at the Oscars.

Based on her own 2014 memoir Molly’s Game: The True Story of the 26-Year-Old Woman Behind the Most Exclusive, High-Stakes Underground Poker Game in the World, the story is well-paced but could perhaps do with a tighter edit as it tells the rise and fall of Bloom.

A modest box-office success, taking $53.4 million from a budget of $30 million, Bloom is portrayed by Chastain in Molly’s Game as a ruthless, highly ambitious operator from a high-achieving family, who is determined to get what she wants – almost at all costs.

The story starts with Bloom pursuing her Olympic dream as a moguls skier, only for injury to ruin her hopes of competing. Bloom heads out to Los Angeles and is introduced to the poker world by her skeezy boss Dean (well played by Jeremy Strong).

From there, Bloom comes into her own and Chastain, who was previously Oscar-nominated twice, for The Help and Zero Dark Thirty, shows how the aspiring lawyer uses her smarts to learn everything about how to run a poker game. But it would not be much of a story if the film only looked at Bloom’s success – it also charts her failures.

 

 

Idris Elba (Luther, The Wire) excels as Bloom’s lawyer Charlie Jaffey, who is initially wary of taking Bloom on as a client when she faces an FBI investigation into an illegal underground poker room. The scenes between Elba and Chastain are where the film really starts to take flight and it would benefit from more of the duo being given time to shine together.

Molly’s Game is a hard film to categorise, a mid-budget adult drama of the like that does not seem to be made any more. James Hemple, expert in all things gambling from AustralianCasinoClub, had this to say about the movie: “What I liked the most was the way Sorkin showed the poker scenes. Unlike some other films where the way gambling is portrayed simply does not ring true and badly affects your suspension of disbelief, he absolutely nailed it!”

A highlight of the poker scenes is Michael Cera, who plays ‘Player X’, an unnamed celebrity card shark. The character is believed to be a composite of famous names including actors Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and Ben Affleck, all of whom are known to be poker fans.

Cera’s character is among those who will gradually lead Bloom into a darker world, Molly having previously battled to stay on the right side of the law. Cera, like Chastain, is absolutely in his element here in what is a total gift of a cameo role. Another player, the slightly cliched drunken Irishman Douglas Downey (Chris O’Dowd), will introduce Russian gangsters to the mix.

 

Why the film works and where it falls down

At this point, it would have been easy for Molly’s Game to go down a well-trodden path followed by many other crime films over the years. But instead, Sorkin wisely keeps a tight focus on Bloom herself, allowing the queenly Chastain to dominate the picture.

In her scenes with Elba, Chastain shows Bloom’s vulnerability – this is the first time she is really out of her depth and worried about her future. And yet, typically, she understands that she can get herself out of the situation with hard work, devouring legal books in a bid to help her case.

Fans of Sorkin’s previous work will certainly find a lot to love about Molly’s Game. The rapid dialogue from his previous scripts such as The Social Network and The West Wing is present throughout – you cannot switch off for a second or you will miss half a dozen lines of dialogue.

But that Molly’s Game is so Sorkinesque is a criticism as well as praise. As director, he employs few cinematic elements to lift the material from the page to the screen. And despite the terrific work of Chastain and Elba, as well as Kevin Costner as Molly’s bullying dad, the script always feels extremely written rather than featuring natural speech – as is often the way with Sorkin.

The ending feels slightly pat too, with a redemptive scene with Molly and her father feeling ultimately unnecessary. “I’m going to give you three years of therapy in three minutes,” says Bloom’s father Larry in one of the most obvious lines of Sorkinese on show here.

With the finished product probably over long by at least 15 to 20 minutes, this part could be cut without losing any of the story’s thrust. While Costner gives a strong performance, much of the Bloom backstory could likely be lost from the film entirely, creating a much tauter movie.

Perhaps most importantly, the film shows that while the high-stakes world of poker gambling can be incredibly glamorous, the seduction of the industry can swallow people up as well. Showing this side of the world is struggling gambler Harlan Eustice (Bill Camp – lately seen in Black Mass and Midnight Special), who loses everything and nearly leads Bloom to do much the same.

Sorkin has been criticised at times for his treatment of female characters, or lack of ability to bring them into important roles in his work. But Bloom is a gift of a character for him to write and Chastain to play, a super smart woman who knows exactly what she wants, and how to get it. Success, of course, comes at a cost for Bloom. Sorkin and Chastain do not shy away from showing how addiction and violence have a huge impact on her life as it slips out of control.

 

 

Molly’s Game is not a film that will reward multiple viewings – there is simply not enough depth to the storytelling across almost two and a half hours of exposition-heavy film for that – but Sorkin’s script and Chastain’s career-best performance is more than enough to recommend it.