Real Deal

Molly’s Game is an engaging true-life story of a woman in the world of high-stakes poker

Jessican Chastain is Molly Bloom

Jessica Chastain takes the role of Molly Bloom, real-life infamous poker game organizer and former championship skier, and nails it. Molly's Game takes a true story that seems too crazy to be real and makes it into a great movie about a woman's struggle against the justice system and the perils of gambling outside the already dangerous realm of a casino.

This is a great actress firing on all cylinders with an extra rocket booster on her back. Making the experience all the more enjoyable would be screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network) making a stylish, snappy directorial debut that shows he has a big future beyond the keyboard.

Bloom was a top-notch athlete, shepherded by her domineering father (an excellent Kevin Costner), who had all of her plans laid out before her. She was going to medal at the Olympics, go to law school, and graduate to entrepreneur status. Her plans started to hit a snag when it was discovered she had spinal issues. Major surgeries later, she managed to get back on the slopes, only to be done in by a pine branch, followed by a colossal crash.

Post slope disaster, Bloom found herself working high stakes poker games populated by big gamblers and celebrities. Michael Cera shows up in the movie as one of the players, allegedly based upon notorious card player Tobey Maguire. Cera is great in the role, but it would've been very interesting if they could've gotten Maguire to play himself. That would've been fantastically weird.

Bloom graduates from working the games to organizing them. She works up to having the highest stakes game in New York before things go awry, eventually leading to massive legal problems.

That's where Idris Elba, playing Bloom's lawyer, enters into the fray and scorches the screen alongside Chastain. Both benefit from precisely written, fiery dialogue courtesy of Sorkin. The screenplay and direction are so good, the courtroom scenes in this film actually stand as some of the movie's greater moments. That's coming from a guy whose eyes often glaze over during courtroom dramas.

The film also manages to take the usual stigma of a narrator (in this case Chastain), and making that exemplary too. Narrators often signify a storytelling weakness, a way to clarify things in a film that is messy. In this case, the narration takes the excitement of the story to another level. And, quite honestly, given the complexity of Bloom's story and its intricacies, some nice notes from the narrator along the way don't hurt. The whole movie has the snap reminiscent of the great Ray Liotta narration in Goodfellas. It gives the overall proceedings a slight vibe of being unoriginal in some ways but who cares? The thing is fun to watch.

Cera, whose official role name is Player X, gets a good chance to go a little darker and dramatic here, and it pays off. Cera is one of the more underrated, reliable comedic actors in play right now, and his work shows he's capable of so much more. Basically, if you need to cast a major prick, go ahead and put Cera on your list.

Costner's resurgence continues in this film after his triumph last year in Hidden Figures. He's making his name for himself as elder statesmen who seem like bastards but actually have a heart of gold. The cast is rounded out by strong, colorful characters around the poker tables and inhabiting the courtroom.

In Molly's Game, Sorkin's dialogue (adapted from Bloom's autobiography) has the kinetic energy of the best David Mamet scripts. While there are quiet moments, the movie generally fires along at a high energy level that never becomes overbearing. That's where Sorkin gets big kudos for his directing chops. He keeps a heavily worded, constantly moving movie tremendously entertaining and remarkably coherent.

In the end, the overriding victory is that this is another shining moment for Chastain. There were many great awards worthy performances by actresses this year, and this is surely one of them.

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