A solid directorial debut from the veteran screenwriter

Rating: 8/10 (1 February 2018)

Molly's Game is a biographical drama film based on the memoir of the same name. Written and directed by Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, A Few Good Men, The Social Network), it is a solid directorial debut from the veteran screenwriter and yet another interesting look into the mindset of a real-life individual.
In the early 2000s, Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain) an aspiring skier, dreams of making it big in the 2002 Winter Olympics. After sustaining a serious injury to her spine, Molly decides to take a year off and move to Los Angeles. While there, Molly lands a job as the office manager for a real estate developer named Dean (Jeremy Strong), who also holds underground poker games with many rich and famous individuals. Molly helps Dean out by appealing to his poker players and in doing so, makes large sums of money from tips alone. Eventually, Dean feels that Molly has become too independent from him and he fires her, leading her to decide to run her own underground poker games.
Right from the get-go, the film draws its audience into the world of its titular character. The rapid-fire dialogue, a trademark of Sorkin's style, immediately helps us get to know Molly's motivations and aspirations in life and what makes her so intriguing in the first place. Sorkin's directorial style is somewhat reminiscent of Edgar Wright, with its quick-cut editing and brisk pace and his approach to telling this story in particular feels like how Martin Scorsese did with The Wolf of Wall Street. Jessica Chastain gives one of the best performances of her career as Molly Bloom. Her delivery of some of the film's best lines is perfectly on point and feel natural coming from an actress like her. Idris Elba is also worth noting as Molly's lawyer, Charlie Jaffey, a man equally as fascinated by her life story as the audience itself.
I rate it 8/10