It's on

Rating: 6/10 (15 March 2018)

"Molly's Game" is a Chinese/American/Canadian new movie that is mostly in the English language and at 2 hours and 20 minutes, it is one of the longest big players this awards season. It culminated in another Oscar nomination for writer Aaron Sorkin, for whom this film is also his very first directorial effort almost at the age of 60. Lead actress Jessica Chastain managed (like Sorkin too) a Golden Globe nomination for her effort here and she is basically in almost every scene from start to finish. The movie is based on the book by the real Molly Bloom and funnily enough Bloom is younger today still than Chastain who played Bloom in the very early stages of her life too, not the childhood scenes though obviously. But Chastain works the part and this film here is definitely better than her also fairly recent "Miss Sloane". Idris Elba is probably the male actor with the most screen time here, but honestly his material is very mediocre most of the time and I am saying this as a big fan of Elba, especially on Luther. It is really all about Chastain. All about Bloom and not so much about all the male characters surrounding her. Interestingly enough, there is not really one other female character who even plays a supporting role in the grand scheme of things. For me as a Dark Angel fan, it was a truly nice surprise to see J.C. MacKenzie in here play one of the bigger supporting characters as he is in quite a few scenes. But the male supporting characters were all fairly fun and interesting, be it the completely unskilled poker player Bad Brad who beats the talented one (Harlan) eventually causing his demise, or be it Dean Keith who was fun too in the first half before he disappears. So was Chris O'Dowd in the second half. The only one who really did not fit was Michael Cera to be honest as some kind of business/poker mastermind pulling all kinds of strings. It just did not feel real. Then again, I think Cera is generally pretty limited, so this conclusion does not surprise me.
As for the subject, yes it is about poker, but you don't need to know the rules or play the game yourself in order to enjoy the movie. I personally play very rarely and this was not a problem at all. The film is about much more. I do think the writing is the greatest strength of the film next to Chastain's performance. Especially the voice-over sequences felt very competent. But also most of the dialogues. Still there were problems. The ways in which they depicted the character's struggles to gain power over men and eventually quoted this as her key motivation did not always feel smooth and same goes for the parallel they are making towards her past as an athlete compared to her competitive spirit in the now. Or I should say later in the past as the now is really the trial I guess and everything else is just really long flashbacks. Costner did a good job for the most part and elevated the material most of the time, but the father-daughter relationship component, which proves crucial near the very end, did not always work in a way I hoped it would. It all felt a bit for the sake of it giving the movie additional emotional depth without really succeeding in that field and I am not surprised Costner did not receive any big awards attention here despite playing a fairly baity character as we find out at the very end. The film is not scared of depicting pain and violence and this is a good thing as it just fit in convincingly. On the completely opposite side, Sorkin does a good job with getting occasional moments of comedy in like the Kirke reference. On the downside, there were moments when the movie did not always feel 100% realistic and authentic like the pair of kings eventually appearing, but well it can happen of course, but chances are so minimal that it felt more for storytelling purposes really. But all in all, this was certainly a good watch. The film never drags and that is a pretty strong achievement for such a long movie I must say. It is definitely among Sorkin's best from what I've seen and does not need to hide behind his recent television work or "The Social Network", which earned him an Oscar and may still be his career-defining work. I definitely recommend Molly's Game and if you like most of the actors as much as I do, then that is the icing on top of the cake that will make it an even better watch for you just like it did for me, but also if not, you may want to check it out. It really is worth seeing. Finally, to close my review: One small reference about how the central character expects phone calls and the first one comes resulting in her dismissal, while the second one does not come after she was beaten up and had her life (and her mother's) threatened by the Russian mob thanks to (for Molly) lucky coincidence. Also interesting how the main character is really depicted as a very likable person despite all she did, also with the help of scenes that show her caring for and helping the poker players when their addiction gets the better of them. They definitely wanted to make sure here that audiences cheer for Molly and don't want her to go to jail for what she did. I have not read the book, so can't say how close the film is to the original literature it is based on. That's all now. Watch it!