Miss Sloane

“When I take the stand, you’ll see noth­ing but a gran­ite wall,” says Jes­si­ca Chastain’s epony­mous DC pow­er play­er to her con­cerned lawyer, a few min­utes into Miss Sloane. He’s school­ing her in the nec­es­sary specifics of plead­ing the Fifth Amend­ment when she’s hauled in front of a spe­cial com­mit­tee, set up to take her to task on eth­i­cal infringe­ments in her role as a high-fly­ing ​“con­vic­tion lob­by­ist”. As the rules of dra­ma dic­tate, it’s not long before cracks begin to appear, fis­sures formed when per­son­al assump­tions threat­en a man­i­cured and fero­cious­ly guard­ed pro­fes­sion­al veneer.

To all intents and pur­pos­es, Eliz­a­beth Sloane is a vam­pire, a porce­lain insom­ni­ac sub­sist­ing on a steady diet of ego, amphet­a­mines and the weak­ness of those fool­ish enough to fall into her cir­cle of influ­ence. She’s ​“the poster child for the most moral­ly bank­rupt pro­fes­sion since faith heal­ing,” ever-ready to fire an arse­nal of with­er­ing put-downs, to throw com­rades-in-arms under a bus in ser­vice of an endgame.

Patho­log­i­cal­ly averse to human rela­tion­ships beyond the trans­ac­tion­al, Sloane fights to keep said gran­ite wall intact; per­son­al ques­tions dis­missed with, ​“That’s all my prin­ci­ples of exchange will allow.” While it’s refresh­ing that the bor­der­line sociopa­thy of a gen­der-neu­tral cor­po­rate war­rior suf­fers lit­tle in the way of psy­cho­log­i­cal mansplain­ing, third act rev­e­la­tions reveal a bluff­ing hand of cat­a­stroph­ic proportions.

As Sloane jumps ship from the firm that wants her to ​“start get­ting women into guns,“ in favour of an under­dog out­fit fight­ing for stricter buy­ing reg­u­la­tions, Miss Sloane clear­ly wants us to think it’s about ethics in polit­i­cal lob­by­ing. When per­son­al alliances are formed and sac­ri­ficed, it wants us to think it’s about ethics in pro­fes­sion­al rela­tion­ships. What it’s real­ly about is Jon Perera’s screenplay.

It’s dif­fi­cult to dis­cuss the clang­ing stu­pid­i­ty of its dénoue­ment with­out giv­ing too much away, suf­fice to say that the least of its prob­lems are the cyborg cock­roach­es and the most hilar­i­ous­ly potent into­na­tion of the word ​‘EARTH­QUAKE’ since Charl­ton Hes­ton found him­self stuck in LA’s crack. The rev­e­la­tion of Perera’s ulti­mate pri­or­i­ty – that every­thing has been in ser­vice to a long-con – under­mines all that preceded.

Sloane’s opac­i­ty becomes less a ques­tion of psy­cho­log­i­cal sub­tle­ty than a mere tool in guard­ing Perera’s duff hand. Sup­port­ing char­ac­ters fare lit­tle bet­ter. Gugu Mbat­ha-Raw, Jake Lacy and Mark Strong are lit­tle more than emp­ty con­structs posi­tioned to serve as moral coun­ter­points to Chastain’s emo­tion­al vacuum.

That said, in its own trashy, House of Cards‑y kind of way, the film is nev­er less than engag­ing – even at its most pre­pos­ter­ous. Chas­tain sinks her fangs into her meati­est role since Zero Dark Thir­ty, and John Mad­den keeps things mov­ing, whip­ping off his Marigolds to skil­ful­ly nego­ti­ate 132 min­utes of sub-Sorkin walk-n-talks. Yet with ques­tions of polit­i­cal ethics get­ting a thor­ough air­ing of late, the film’s unwill­ing­ness to engage in any mean­ing­ful sense with the issues it pur­ports to raise feels like an oppor­tu­ni­ty squandered.