Did you know the centre of the universe smells of elderberries?

Rating: 6/10 (7 January 2018)

When a story needs to be told, Hollywood is the place to go. And this story is bold and resilient. It has a bravura ending. But despite the solid cast and the presence of Sorkin, this film seemed to have clear quality gaps, with the occasional feeling of an 80's TV movie.
Chastain was superb throughout, although often shot as if the director really wanted Julia Roberts. She plays the sharp hostess, the sympathetic ear and the foil to the boys with money. And yet the script often just fails her. Intelligence is often reduced to stupid wikipedia quotes, and the indie style sidetracking didn't really work. At one point she almost said 'I know Kung Fu'
Idris Elba finally gets his first serious role for ages, and the film's clinching speech, but he has a couple of scenes which simply needed to be reshot. He doesn't yet display the timing needed for light comedy or the touch for those early two way sizing up parts.
The photography was surprisingly poor; combined with indifferent post processing that made it look inferior to most Netflix productions. If you have sports shots, you need sport photography - which was evidently missing. They used some of the classic 'bag of money' shots, and the god life going out of control fast sequences, but there were many energy sapping loose scenes between. Much of the set design was oddly second rate. I don't understand why this should be.
Some of the scenes just lacked chemistry; Chastain doesn't always work well with others. This sometimes reflected Molly Blooms slightly fish out of water naivety, but sometimes not.
All in all this was an entertaining piece, with some fun bit parts, that just should have been treated better.