Molly's Game

Once again Hollywood has thrown at us a film based on a true story that will knock your socks off if not for the story, for the person it is about: an Olympic hopeful that through a skiing accident, turns her life toward starting a high-stakes poker circuit. There have been a number of poker films in the past, "The Cincinnati Kid" '65 comes to mind, but none that is as intense as "Molly's Game".

Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain), a beautiful young Olympic-class skier, ran the world's most exclusive high-stakes poker game for a decade before being arrested in the middle of the night by 17 FBI agents wielding automatic weapons. Her players included Hollywood royalty, sports stars, business titans, and finally, unbeknownst to her, the Russian mob. Her only ally was her criminal defense attorney Charlie Jaffey (Idris Elba), who learned that there was much more to Molly than the tabloids led us to believe.

The story is told as a series of flashbacks by Molly to us, the audience ,and to her attorney, Charlie, which starts with her training as an Olympic skier by her tough as nails father, Larry Bloom (Kevin Costner) to her new boss in the poker field, Dean Keith (Jeremy Strong). As she becomes more powerful and rich, this merely starts her downhill spiral being in a field that was seemingly way over her head.

Others to round out the cast are Michael Cera as Player X, Chris O'Dowd as Douglas Downey, J.C. MacKenzie as Harrison Wellstone, Brian d'Arcy James as Brad, Bill Camp as Harlan Eustice, Graham Greene as Judge Foxman, Justin Kirk as Jay, Angela Gots as B and Natalie Krill as Winston.

This was remarkably directed well by Aaron Sorkin. I say remarkably because this is his directorial debut for anything--feature films or TV. The way he was able to achieve life from these different characters was nothing short of perfection. Certainly he knows his actors well considering he's written many screenplays for films plus when a director has the consummate actors this guy had--Chastain and Elba, how could anyone go wrong? As long as he wants to continue down this path, he will be in the director's chair again. It was also well written by Sorkin ("A Few Good Men" '92, "Malice" '93, "The American President" '95, "Charlie Wilson's War" '07, "The Social Network" '10, "Moneyball" '11, "Steve Jobs" '15) plus TV. Obviously writing is like second nature to this filmmaker and this script certainly shows it. Although the story was powerfully written, it was a bit long-in-the-tooth to let us, the audience, know how Molly's world was turned upside down. It probably could've been cut about 10-15 minutes off the running time, otherwise this film rocked. This writer likes to write message laden subject matter, but it would be interesting to see this writer create something that is strictly entertaining and fluff. If you like his writing, "A Few Good Men" (TV movie), is in pre-production and is due a 2018 release. The performances by both Chastain and Elba were acted effortlessly and could possibly garner Chastain an Oscar nomination come that time.

If you like message films, you'll be in message heaven, but even if you're not, the acting by Chastain, Elba and even Costner will be enough to justify the cost of admission. If you leave the theater with more questions about Molly as when the film started, don't feel like you're a lone star. Molly is such a complex individual, it's difficult to weigh whether she won at the end or not.

Out of 4 Stars: 3.5                               Rated: R                                 141mins.