Young Woman's Success & Downfall Is Riveting In Molly's Game

Rating: 7/10 (18 January 2018)

Molly's Game was a pleasant surprise to me. I went into it knowing nothing of the person or the story. I found it refreshing how the backstory was laid out so clinically so one can see how the entire mess Ms. Bloom found herself in came to be. It's a good setup to how being relentlessly driven can go in several very different directions. The performance by Jessica Chastain as Molly drives the show here as she brings the intelligent highly complicated Molly Bloom to life.You feel Ms. Bloom was shaped into a tough cookie by early failure which drove her to succeed in a quite left-field way. That success did go sideways but, not without a complete reinventing of her life. That life was equal parts greed and proving herself while never selling out even the shadiest characters who often used her - and sold her out. Chastain makes you care for Ms. Bloom even as you never really like her. That's excellent acting because you still invest heavily in her situation It's a humdinger with loads of bad stuff including real life danger and ultimate ruin which looms right up until the finale. The other notable character in this tale turns out to be Ms. Bloom's unlikely defense lawyer Charlie Jeffrey played to conflicted excellence by Idris Elba. This movie makes me want to read the book as I'm sure it delves deeper. That's a real compliment as far as I'm concerned.