Molly's Game

2017 biopic

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Based on the memoir by Molly Bloom about how she built up a lucrative business running a high-stakes poker game with celebrities and rich guys and then found herself in a little bit of trouble.

Molly's a fascinating character. She's heavily flawed, like most humans, but her integrity, her perseverance, and her fortitude are inspiring. This is a fascinating story, and with a writer like Sorkin--who's also directing his first feature film, it becomes an even more intense drama. You've got a heroine, and you've got some bad guys, but what makes this most interesting are all the characters in that grayish in-between. This is filled with anecdotes, characters who kind of come and go and color Molly Bloom's story.

By now, you know what to expect with Sorkin writing the words these characters say. The dialogue's as snappy as you'd predict it would be, more words-per-minute than any other writer I can think of. The screenplay is self-referential and almost always so smart. Lines bite and words sizzle, and when it's all put together and spat out by these characters, sometimes when they're even talking over each other, it's almost like a new form of poetry. Sorkin writes dialogue that has action, conversations like car chases.

The non-linear storytelling at times makes it seem like Sorkin's a bit too ambitious. He juggles three time periods, and it sometimes didn't make sense to me why certain moments in the movies past, more distant past, or present were arranged like they were. There are also a few moments that, while still entertaining in almost a gossipy way, felt a little redundant or superfluous. And there's one really clumsy moment where a character shows up in a random place and meets another character that was just implausible and a little dumb. Granted, that's actually how things might have happened, but it seemed really silly to me. At first, I thought this thing had ventured into magical realism or something. You'll know what I'm talking about if you see this movie.

Michael Cera is in this, ostensibly playing a composite character of famous actors who frequented Molly's game--Affleck, Dicaprio, Damon. After doing a bit of reading, it seems he's based most on Tobey Maguire. And while I like Michael Cera quite a bit, Tobey Maguire is apparently a real prick. I tweeted him to let him know that, but he hasn't been active on Twitter since 2013 and probably won't reply.

I'm not the biggest Jessica Chastain fan even though I think she's very attractive--usually the only thing this unquestionably superficial man looks for in an actress. I thought she was really good here. She has this ability to seem both completely confident and completely fragile at the same time. I could have maybe done with a little less of her narration, but I guess I just have to accept that when watching a filmed version of somebody's memoir. Isris Elba is good as her beleaguered attorney, and I thought Kevin Costner and Chris O'Dowd were great as Molly's father and a jittery drunk player respectively. Oh, and Bill Camp played one of the more fascinating side characters in one of the more depressing side plots, and he does it so well that I almost believed that part of the movie was a documentary.

I like poker, but this isn't a poker movie like The Cincinnati Kid or Rounders. It's more like a movie with some poker in it. It's probably exactly what most people would expect it to be, and if that sounds like your bag, this is something you'll probably enjoy.