Well done Molly! Well done! This film delivers the best hand in a Royal Flush!

Rating: 10/10 (18 February 2018)

It is understandable that the producers would take some liberties with the film Molly's Game and portray Molly Bloom (played by Jessica Chastain) as more of a victim than a perpetrator of a crime(s). It is also understandable that it is near impossible to portray a real person's true persona on the big screen in only 140 minutes when their true story covers three (3) or more decades of actual living experiences. Suffice to say though that Mrs. Shullivan and I quite enjoyed the ups and especially the downs of Molly's game.
There were some great supporting performances such as Bill Camp's performance as the serious poker player Harlan Eustice. Molly's professor father Larry Bloom was played by Academy Award winner Kevin Costner, and her defense lawyer was played by the superb actor Idris Elba. Graham Greene played the sympathetic New York state Judge Foxman.
The film unfolds as Jessica Chastain who plays Molly periodically narrates her own life story to the film audience. Molly Bloom's narrative style works quite well in explaining Molly's lifestyle choice and how through osmosis and some strong female ambition she beats the men in a men's game/world. If not for a sympathetic judge Molly may have done some hard time in prison for her crimes at running an illegal card game that included a known criminal element at her tables in more than one state.
The film ran for 140 minutes and I never found it to be slow moving at all. Mrs. Shullivan felt that some of the poker terms could have been explained and I heard the same concern raised by other movie goers at the film end, but eh, how often in a medical drama film does a doctor provide his/her diagnosis to a patient using a medical term and no one even cares what it means. The actual euphoria that some players experience after winning a big pot was never included in the film. However the despair of an addicted poker player who cannot buy a winning hand was quite evident when seasoned actor Bill Camp (2016 The Night Of) who plays Harlan Eustice insists to Molly to keep extending him a further line of credit way above his ability to pay back Molly for his hundreds of thousands of dollars of poker debt extended in one night. The desperation and fear on Harlan's face I have witnessed many times on a losing gamblers face and it is not a pretty sight.
Molly's Game may have only shown the audience half of who Molly Bloom really was downplaying her drinking and drug addictions but it also portrays a woman who would not sell out any of the men whose lives would have been ruined even though none of them appeared in her corner when she could really have used both their financial and personal support when the Federal government was squeezing her for high profile names and critical information.
Molly's game draws a Royal Flush and is well worth seeing at least twice. A perfect 10 for 10.