Molly's Game

Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba in Molly's Game

Aaron Sorkin's Molly's Game, his directorial debut, is a muff. An  example of a gifted, yet limited screenwriter who knows how to tell, but not show a narrative. A good example of this is a scene following a mob enforcer's beating of the titular Molly Bloom. Sorkin throughout utilizes his lead actress's narration, but to what end. Sometimes it amplifies Jessica Chastain's characterization, but here the effect is redundant. Chastain describes the injuries at the same time Sorkin is showing the same. Why? There is no reason to do this in a motion picture. In film, one must show or illustrate one's tale.

I have read the book Sorkin has based the film on, mostly because I wanted to read about the high stakes poker game Molly Bloom hosted. However, Sorkin is obviously not interested in poker per se and has recast the memoir into a portrait of a driven woman beset by creepy men. This is all fair in an adaptation, the memoirs is flimsy, but Sorkin's additions reek of contrivance. He chooses to expand the presence of Molly's father, a choice that fatally results in what Manny Farber referred to as "The Gimp"; a resort to Cracker Jack box Freud to explain a character's psychological makeup. Farber was writing in 1951, the heyday of Freudian noir, but The Gimp plagues us to this day. Sorkin is most assuredly not an avant gardist, his work is rooted in the social realism of The Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse and its ilk. He is our Paddy Chayefsky.

Thus, Sorkin presents Bloom's contentious relationship with her psychologist pater as her primary motivating force. Boyfriends lightly touched upon in the book are excised. The demanding Dad is embodied by the miscast Kevin Costner, who nicely underplays. He's given a speech in which he has to offer a snap analysis of his daughter's travails and Chastain and he make the moment palatable, if not believable. Unfortunately, Chastain has no such chemistry with Idris Elba, who plays her lawyer. I can't decide if we are seeing the limits of Chastain's range or if Hollywood has simply typecast her as a cold bitch. Nevertheless, neither she nor Sorkin are able to elicit much sympathy or interest in Bloom's plight. 

The character of the lawyer is another Sorkin add on. The lawyer has a daughter who bonds with Bloom, limply underling the film's putative feminist message. The lawyer exists in the film because Sorkin evidently feels, post A Few Good Men, that the courtroom drama is in his wheelhouse. So, Elba is given a rousing speech in which he chides the FBI for overzealously going after a fairly virtuous small fry. But since Bloom pled guilty and got off lightly, the speech occurs in an interrogation room and the grandstanding effect does not come off; despite a good try by Elba. With its high flying protagonist succumbing to drug abuse, Molly's Game seems at times an inept retread of The Wolf of Wall Street. Perhaps a better comparison would be Fincher's The Social Network, another Sorkin script more ably served by its visuals. (5/13/18)