‘Molly’s Game’ plays quite the cool hand
Words and cards are dealt in equal hand with Aaron Sorkin’s poker drama Molly’s Game, featuring Jessica Chastain at the center of a compelling film about fame, power and empathy.
Oscar-winning screenwriter Sorkin makes his debut as a film director with an intoxicating and slyly funny adaptation ( rated R; in theaters in New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Atlanta, Chicago and other cities now, nationwide Jan. 5) of Molly Bloom’s memoir of the same name in which the former Olympic skiing hopeful turned tabloid “poker princess” (played by Chastain) is nabbed by the FBI after more than a decade of running illegal card games. Her players included movie stars, rappers, athletes and Russian mobsters, yet even as Molly faces professional and financial ruin when the feds close in, she won’t let others’ personal lives go down with her.
The movie chronicles her younger skiing days, where she bounced back on the slopes after scoliosis and tussled with her psychologist father at dinner but also flits between Molly’s rise putting together high-stakes underground poker nights and her later legal troubles, which begin when 17 heavily armed FBI agents show up at her apartment when she’s sleeping.
Molly gains a saint in attorney Charlie Jaffey (Idris Elba), the one guy she finds who isn’t shady, and Chastain and Elba riff nicely off each other with the usual machine-gun dialogue that’s Sorkin’s signature.
As any fan of The West Wing, A Few Good Men and The Social Network can attest, Sorkin’s scripts are talkative and usually top-notch, and Molly’s Game is no exception, with bon mots such as “I was raised to be a champion. My goal was to win. At what and against who? Those were just details.” As a director, he keeps the storytelling tight and mostly tangent-free: Sorkin covers a lot of ground in 2 hours and 20 minutes, but it never feels slow.
And when Sorkin does go off on side episodes, they’re for the greater good. Molly’s dealings with a nihilistic and smarmy A-list movie star (Michael Cera), a gambler (Bill Camp) who loses his cool and the drunk Irishman (Chris O’Dowd) responsible for pulling the Russian Mafia into her games actually boost the overall narrative rather than cannibalize it.
Alongside last year’s enjoyable Miss Sloane, Molly’s Game makes an interesting double feature for Chastain playing women who find ways to rule in maledominated worlds: As Molly narrates, her actions are driven by “blinding anger at my powerlessness over the unfair whims of men.” Yet Chastain gives her vulnerable and complicated sides, too, as Molly falls under the influence of drugs and later has a deeply moving and cathartic conversation with her father. It’s a scene that makes the most of her talents as well as Kevin Costner’s in a solid supporting role.
Sorkin has quite a few winning pairs. Don’t know jack about full houses, flips and rivers? He’s got your back on all the poker terminology Molly learns on the job. And using some helpful visuals, he heightens the card-shark drama enough so everybody’s all in for a winning Game.