Movie Review: ‘Molly’s Game’
Aaron Sorkin’s directorial debut pays out, somewhat
Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain) was an competitive skier whose life was changed inexorably by of all things, a pine twig. Twigs help mark a snowy downhill trail and help give the skier a sense of depth perception in snowy conditions. During the Olympic trials, she was in the middle of her run and then boom, she ran over a twig and lost a ski, which caused a terrifying tumble and ended her Olympic dreams. In poker terms, that’s what might be called “a bad beat.” She lost an almost sure hand on a “river” card, all because of a single twig. You would have to think that after something like this, things could only look up for Molly — or just the start of her downhill tumble.
“Molly’s Game” is the first film both written and directed by Aaron Sorkin. Sorkin, creator of The West Wing and Oscar-winning screenwriter of the “The Social Network”, adapted Bloom’s real-life story of the rise and eventual fall of the so-called “Poker Princess.” He brings all his noted (or notorious) bag of tricks to bear in this movie: fast-talking, overly competent characters with a tendency to spell out the messages of the movie to you. This is what makes Sorkin great on occasion and sometimes completely unbearable (e.g., most of The Newsroom). In “Molly’s Game” you get a decent mix of both.
After the disappointment of missing out of the Olympics, Molly puts off going to any number of prestigious law schools to crash on a friend’s couch out in sunny Los Angeles. Possibly to put skiing behind her or to escape a more than antagonistic relationship with her overbearing coach/psychiatrist/father Larry (Kevin Costner). Working as a waitress in a fancy nightclub eventually leads her to employment with a scuzzy real estate developer, Dean (Jeremy Strong), who just happens to run an exclusive, high-end, high stakes poker game for star-studded clientele and other such millionaires. Molly, who’s always been a quick study, quickly learns the game of poker and the tendencies of its players. Once Dean tries to squeeze her out because he’s running low on funds, she takes his game, his players, and the most importantly of all, Player X (Michael Cera). In the context of the movie Player X is supposedly an amalgam of many of Molly’s celebrity players but is mostly based off of one in particular, Tobey Maguire (allegedly). Player X and Molly work almost hand-in-hand to build up the new game, attracting newer, richer, and more famous players. Well, that is until he eventually he tries to squeeze her out too. “You are so f**ked” is how Player X let’s Molly know that he’s moved the game and taken everything else along with that, leaving her to start over again.
Molly establishes a new game in New York with a new set of players and problems. You know, little problems like, connections to the Russian mafia, getting ruffed-up in her apartment by the New York mafia, and just happening to have an FBI-informant, Douglas (played by the funny Chris O’Dowd), playing in her game. If that wasn’t enough she develops a tiny drug and alcohol habit in an attempt to stay up for all of those late-night poker games. At some point the FBI is bound to come knocking at Molly’s door and eventually they do.
The narrative structure of the film is probably not as linear as I’m making it seem. A large portions of the movie include voice-overs by Molly (a big Robert McKee no-no) and shift time around — from Molly’s training with her dad when she’s younger, to her competitive skiing days, to her time running poker games in LA and New York. But for the most part, the story is all framed by the FBI indictment and subsequent trial. Molly needs a lawyer, a good one, possibly one that will work for free because the IRS has all of her money. Enter high-priced attorney Charlie Jaffey (Idris Elba). He’s not really interested in taking her case or believing that she didn’t commit a crime while running possibly-illegal underground poker games, but he takes the case anyway at the behest of his young daughter.
Chastain is great in this, per usual, getting the better of her male counterparts in the movie, especially in her scenes with Elba. Michael Cera was well cast to play an entitled Hollywood creep (that’s a compliment), but it may strain credulity seeing him as a big enough star to be a draw to the elite of elites. Costner does well in the jerk dad role. It seems that’s all that’s left for him to play as far as dad roles go. A shout-out needs to go to character actor, Bill Camp, who plays Harlan Eustice. He give a brief but heartbreaking performance as a by-the-numbers poker player and degenerate gambler, who loses it all.
This movie is too long for what it is. I guess I’m old now because I think I say this about every movie I see. It also might take a minute or twenty to ease your way back into the rat-tat-tat of that signature Sorkin dialogue but once you settle in, it works for the most part. If you are looking for a straight-up poker movie à la “Rounders,” you’re not going to find that here. While Sorkin may have gleaned some tricks of the trade from the directors he’s worked with in the past, it doesn’t seem that they are carried out as deftly here. Could you imagine how much tighter of a movie this would have been if it were directed by the like of a David Fincher (“The Social Network”) or Danny Boyle (“Steve Jobs”)? Not to say that this movie was bad or poorly directed by any means, but it lacked a certain polish and purpose that an outside voice — one other than Sorkin’s — could bring.
