Molly’s Game

“If you think a princess can do what I did, you’re incorrect.”

Director	Year	Genre	Run time	Rating
Aaron Sorkin	2017	Crime, Drama	140 min

Aaron Sorkin writes action movies that replaces bullets with words. The battles may only be verbal, but they’re more impactful than any superhero-punch. With his directorial debut, Molly’s Game, he guns down everyone who claims the mid-budget Hollywood movies for adults are dead. Loosely based on the real Molly Bloom’s memoir, this fast-paced crime-drama tells the story of how the would-be Olympian skier ended up running underground poker games. Also, she had daddy issues.

It’s clear from the opening scene that Sorkin paid close attention when previous masters brought his scripts to life. While he does not command the lens with the same unparalleled power he does the page, there’s a boldness to his endless close-ups and quick cuts. The influence of another director is lacking only in Sorkin’s strict adherence to his own script. No individual scenes are bad, but at 140-minutes the film needed someone to mercilessly trim this baby down, regardless of what gold would be lost on the cutting floor. The movie’s length and lightning pace feels like a morbid experiment: this is essentially a marathon sprint. I was physically exhausted by the time it ended.

The structure is similar to The Social Network’s. A present day lawsuit sees Bloom (Jessica Chastain) defend herself against FBI allegations, while a series of flashbacks tell the story these accusations are based off. It’s a testament to this film’s greatness that its two timelines are equally engaging. They compliment each other beautifully – the flashbacks serving as a propulsive motor, the present day as quiet oases, where we finally get a chance to breathe.

Chastain is electrifying. Bloom’s pretty face and ample cleavage perpetually makes the men at her table underestimate her. She doesn’t mind; she mines it. Only exception is when they fall in love with her. And they do, of course they do: “I’m the anti-wife,” she quips. Chastain sells all the misperceptions of Bloom without batting an eye, from the clueless cocktail waitress, to the shrewd mobster and the superficial celebrity. It’s the scenes where she shows the three-dimensional person behind these facades, however, that makes this a truly astounding performance. “What if every single one of your ill-informed unsophisticated opinions about me were wrong?” she asks Charlie Jaffey (Idris Elba), the super-clean lawyer she tries to hire. “I’d be amazed,” he replies. Elba is similarly great here, playing the film’s only fictional character. Sorkin’s explained he needed a character whose perception of Bloom changed throughout the film, and Elba sells this journey beautifully. He gets the film’s biggest Sorkin moment, a polished monologue that he shouts to perfection. Remind me again why Elba isn’t the leading man in everything yet? Michael Cera, Chris O’Dowd and Kevin Costner all put in strong performances in minor roles as well.

The film’s run time isn’t its only problem. Bloom’s father is a psychologist, and Sorkin has too much fun psychoanalysing his protagonist in front of the audience. In this great interview, Sorkin comments that after reading Bloom’s memoir, he was less interested in the book than its author. But no matter how good you are with words, some things are best left unspoken. The ending, though based on real events, also feels rushed and contrived. But the film simply bulldozes through all its problem. They’re there, but they don’t matter. This is the year’s most relentlessly entertaining film, and a beautiful transition for Sorkin from writer to writer/director.

Links:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4209788/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly’s_Game
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/mollys_game_2017/
http://www.metacritic.com/movie/mollys-game
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=mollysgame.htm