82% on Rotten Tomatoes
Chloe's thoughts: Signed, sealed, and recommended by Chloe
Watch it if you: Want to a see a thrilling and entertaining story around poker;
Don't know a lot about poker since the movie does a good job at explaining it;
Are a fan of Jessica Chastain
Molly's Game tells the true story of Molly Bloom, a soon-to-be law student on her gap year who finds herself thrust into an exclusive underground poker game. Suddenly, she's rubbing shoulders with the rich and the famous, assisting in hosting movie stars, directors, Wall Street moguls, and even royalty. Everything's going well but she realises that to make it on her own, and to be taken seriously, she needs to start hosting her own games.
Written and directed (the latter for the first time) by Aaron Sorkin, this film was really entertaining. It's really long, at 2 hours and 20 minutes, but it doesn't feel that long at all.
In fact, it's really well paced and entertaining throughout. There are some fast paced scenes and here is where Aaron Sorkin's writing shines; he just wrote these characters so well and he managed to write about poker games in a way that everyone could understand.
At first, I was a little confused as I didn't know a lot of the poker terminology, and some things went by really quickly and it felt like they went over my head. But soon enough I felt it was explained really well and I was able to understand what was going on, even being on the edge of my seat and sighing a heave of frustration when a particular card was drawn.
But it wasn't just the way the poker games were written. The opening scene was such a great scene. It has nothing to do with poker, but it's hard to see it as unnecessary because it was just so entertaining. It was written so well, instantly grabbing your attention, and when it's all over, you feel like you need to take a deep breath, also because of Chastain's fast narration.
Speaking of, I was surprised at how well the voice-over narration added to the movie. It actually was such a good decision, particularly since a lot of movies cop a lot of flack for choosing to go with boring, annoying, and unnecessary narration. Here, it was necessary to develop both Molly's character as well as explain the poker terms to us.
I really did like the characterisation of Molly in this film, and Jessica Chastain did a fantastic job portraying her. Watching interviews of the real Molly Bloom, you could really see how much of her was in Chastain's performance. So the acting and the writing really came together well to portray this intelligent, capable, and yet unlucky woman.
One thing I will say about Aaron Sorkin's directorial debut here is that in certain scenes, it kind of shows that this is his first time directing. The movie switches between present day and the past, and some of these scene transitions are very awkward and jarring. It was skipping from scene to scene and from time period to time period without a seemingly logical seque. For the most part, though, he did a good job for a first time director.
I'm assuming it was an executive decision either by Aaron Sorkin or by the studio to sort of anonymise some of the other characters, even though some of the real life people's names are mentioned in Molly Bloom's book.
It was interesting to see Michael Cera play against the awkward typecase that he always is, instead playing this anonymous poker player who was a famous movie star. In the movie, he's named Player X, but in real life he is probably Tobey Maguire. I was pretty shocked to find out that Tobey Maguire is an absolute jerk, but the other famous actors that Molly hosted games for (Leonardo DiCaprio and Ben Affleck) don't seem to fit the bill for this Player X guy. The general consensus is that Tobey Maguire was the dickhead who treated Molly terribly, and he does worse in the book than what they show in the movie.
That Player X character pops up more in the beginning of the film as we delve into the start up of Molly's poker games, and later as she gets more involved with poker and the potential of breaking the law, that's when Idris Elba's character as her lawyer comes in.
Idris Elba was great, and he has one scene where he is fantastic in. It's the type of scene that they would play at the Oscars if he was nominated. Although, his accent does slip up a few times, but since they're mainly in the scenes where he's really passionate, then I can forgive him for that.
Kevin Costner also does a few scenes as Molly's tough love father. A lot of people liked this one scene with the two of them, but the writing felt a little too on-the-nose personally, particularly since it was dealing with psychologists and 'analysing people' and I just think it didn't do a very good job of portraying psychologists and therapy. I get that in the end it was just trying to say that it's not that easy to always have answers to your problems, but it was still a weird scene for me.
Obviously, though, the star of this is Jessica Chastain. I've already said how amazing she was in this, but seriously, she did such a fantastic job in this movie. Not only is she super beautiful and sexy in this movie, but she is also such a strong female lead actress, and I love how she always tries to pick strong female characters to portray. I'm really glad she got nominated for the Oscar, it's a very well-deserved nomination.
Overall, this was a really interesting storyline based on a crazy true story. The directing could be better, but the screenplay is written really well. The dialogue is fast-paced, quick, and witty, and the narration is great. Jessica Chastain does a fantastic job and it's a very entertaining movie that doesn't feel as long as it actually is.
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