A fun, fast-paced biopic

Rating: 7/10 (20 January 2018)

I'm a sucker for Sorkin's fast-paced, quick-witted dialogue, and a huge sucker for poker movies. So it's no surprise that I like this one.
Like most, I'll admit to being very impressed with Sorkin's writing up to this point. He generally writes dialogue that's grounded, entertaining, and (mostly) cliche-free. In fact, he's developed such a characteristic style that he's almost created his own self-contained cliches, some of which are hit here, in Molly's Game. Long story short - I like him.
This movie mostly delivers in its dialogue and storytelling. A story about a smart woman starting and running a high-stakes poker game? I'm in. I really enjoyed that the poker and logistics of running a game were portrayed (to my knowledge) accurately. Most poker movies, in an effort to make the content easily digestible for non-poker players/fans, create the most basic, ridiculous scenarios that they think the audience will understand. More often than not, it makes the writers look like high-schoolers whose only poker knowledge is the final 30 minutes of the highlights of a World Series of Poker event. Basically, most poker movies are stupid. Looking at you, Casino Royale. Anyway, Molly's game avoids this pitfall by not showing much of the technical side of the poker. What little it does show is spot-on, though. Mostly, it focuses on the difficulties or running the room itself, and the movie is much more interesting for it.
The story involving the game is excellent, and the dialogue makes it extremely fun to watch.
Here's where the movie loses me: the dialogue focuses so intensely on general wit and moving the story specifics along (and it does this great) that I feel like it drops the ball on developing human characters. This is most notable in Molly, our main character. In a film where she's narrating 100% of the time, we somehow never really get a sense of who she is. Whether Molly is seducing rich businessmen into the poker game, or being physically assaulted by the mob, lines are delivered in the same matter-of-fact, robotic fashion. This is most prominent with her, but every character suffers in the same way. Everyone is cool and calculated, and nothing else. I get that that's the tone of the movie, and it works for large sections, but it's just not enough when you look at the whole picture. The Social Network and Moneyball have the same style, but their characters were more nuanced and therefore able to elicit more emotion out of me.
This ties into the final 30 minutes of the movie, which ends the poker storyline and focuses on Molly, her status, and the aftermath of everything. I really needed to be invested in her character for any of this to work. The film up to this point was an entertaining poker story with smart, but thin characters. The ending tries to get an emotional payoff that wasn't properly set up, and ultimately rings hollow. This is where I began checking the time, which is never good.
Overall, Molly's Game is certainly worth a watch, especially if you're a poker fan. It has Sorkin's usual entertaining, witty dialogue, and a great story to work with. The film just tries to create too much emotional drama late, with characters that didn't quite have the meat. It takes what's a truly great first-half and pulls the final product down to good, but forgettable.