Sorkin almost overwhelms

Rating: 7/10 (4 April 2018)

Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain) is driven by her domineering father (Kevin Costner) with trust issues. After a devastating crash during the Olympics ski trial, she decides to live life in LA for a year before starting law school. She's the black sheep of the family. She starts as a waitress, an office manager, and then organizing high stakes poker for her boss. With famous actor Player X (Michael Cera) as one of her regulars, she starts her own game. After some success, it goes wrong and she has to restart in New York. Years later, she is arrested as a part of a Russian mafia trial. Two years earlier, she had written a book about her exploits after the government confiscated all of her money. She hires reluctant Charlie Jaffey (Idris Elba) as her lawyer.
Molly is a hard character to empathize with. She has a thick wall between her and the audience. She opens up very slowly but her wall never truly falls down. There is a climatic scene with her father in Central Park where her character breaks down emotionally. That meeting is too convenient. Is it even real? It would have been so much easier for him to be stalking her outside her apartment. There is also a tendency for Aaron Sorkin to overwrite his scenes. I love his poetic machine gun style but sometimes it's too much. For example, Jaffey's outburst at the opposing lawyers is too flashy. A simpler and more effective way would be for him to slowly realize the ridiculous Molly wiretaps and have a giant belly laugh. She doesn't say a word and he tells them about the drug reference. Sorkin needs a bit of silence which would actually elevate the writing. Sometimes, he is too much of a good thing. Molly has a great story. There is a small chance that Sorkin overwhelmed the telling of it.