"Molly Dubin Bloom is My Name!"

Rating: Null/10 (11 April 2018)

In the bonus segment of the DVD of "Molly's Game," the real Molly Bloom appears on camera to describe her life as "a story about 'going for it' and succeeding in a man's world." But the filmmakers went further to develop a character of impeccable ethical stature, whose photo should be on a Wheaties box instead of a police mug shot.
The dynamic Molly Bloom who appears in the bonus segment is dynamically portrayed in the film by Jessica Chastain. The film takes much license with the biography of Miss Bloom to paint a picture of what writer-director Aaron Sorkin calls "someone who does the right thing."
The moral preening in the film was far too excessive and smarmy. After a freak accident on the ski slopes that ruined a bid for Olympic gold, Molly went to Los Angeles where she became proficient in operating high-stakes poker games, catering to wealthy and powerful men and serving as stepping stone to the ruin of several compulsive gamblers.
As an athlete, Molly's specialty was mogul skiing; in her second career, she was attracting mogul men to the poker table. Was Molly's goal only to make money? Or did she derive a subliminal pleasure from the power she exerted over men?
The film descends into smarmy pop psychology in Molly's troubled relationship with her domineering and abusive father, a pompous psychologist, who performs a jaw-dropping three-question Freudian therapy session on his daughter. It is never quite clear if Molly is the abused woman, victimized by callous men, or if she is the abuser, exploiting men's weakness for gambling. At one key juncture in the film, Molly refers to herself as Circe, the Greek goddess who turned men into swine.
There was an interesting dynamic between Molly and her slick defense attorney. But, as performed, the dialogue was delivered at such a fast pace that it was difficult to believe that two people could engage in such non-stop banter without at some point falling into a state of collapse. Much of this dialogue sounded "scripted." A fine turn of the phrase from Winston Churchill was squeezed into the dialogue, as his wisdom is recalled in "the ability to move from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm." This tenacity may have belonged as well to Molly Bloom, but she needed a pharmacy full of drugs to sustain her level of enthusiasm. Somehow, she was able complete online courses in astronomy while million-dollar poker pots were being exchanged on her table. Was this due to her "enthusiasm" or to the rush from the drugs?
The most frequently produced play of Arthur Miller, "The Crucible," figured in the drama of Molly Bloom. The attorney's young daughter is studying "The Crucible," which ends with John Proctor going to the gallows during the Salem witch trials in order to salvage his "good name." The film tries to draw a twenty-first century analogy with Molly Dubin Bloom's commitment to preserving her good name, which apparently is worth more to her than an Olympic gold medal. But despite the good performance by Chastain, the film's feel-good message was hollow and empty.