Molly’s Game

In recent years, Jes­si­ca Chas­tain has shown a deter­mi­na­tion to por­tray strong women. Her choic­es to star in films such as A Most Vio­lent Year, Miss Sloane and The Zookeeper’s Wife reflect this desire, and Aaron Sorkin’s Molly’s Game comes as a log­i­cal next step for this right­ful­ly fierce­ly fem­i­nist actress.

Sorkin has demon­strat­ed his abil­i­ty to turn high­ly ambi­tious and self-destruc­tive real life (male) char­ac­ters into com­pelling, pathet­ic yet admirable indi­vid­u­als in his screen­writ­ing work. Final­ly turn­ing to direct­ing after writ­ing major scripts for the likes of Mike Nichols, David Finch­er and Dan­ny Boyle, he doesn’t quite find his feet, although the result is bizarre enough to be enter­tain­ing, even when the whole thing even­tu­al­ly turns sour and ridiculous.

Mol­ly Bloom was raised to be com­pet­i­tive, and after an unbe­liev­ably unlucky ski­ing acci­dent at the 2002 Olympic qual­i­fiers (a scene that gives Sorkin the oppor­tu­ni­ty to play­ful­ly dis­play his love of num­bers and use­less geom­e­try à la The Social Net­work) she soon enough entered into the equal­ly risqué́ field of bro­ker­ing high­ly exclu­sive pok­er games in Los Ange­les and New York.

Chastain’s predilec­tion for tough women is unfor­tu­nate­ly rarely matched by her per­for­mance style, and although it is under­stand­able that a woman in such a male-dom­i­nat­ed envi­ron­ment would choose to keep her emo­tion­al dis­tance and play it cool, her take on Mol­ly Bloom is too stilt­ed and robot­ic to be tru­ly cap­ti­vat­ing, let alone a fig­ure of empowerment.

Chastain’s more sen­si­tive female char­ac­ters – it’s no sur­prise that her turn in Ter­rence Malick’s The Tree of Life made her the star she is today – may not be as obvi­ous­ly cut­throat, but they allow the actress to be more sub­tle and effec­tive in mak­ing the audi­ence care for and revere these women. Kevin Costner’s appear­ance as Molly’s father deserves an hon­orary men­tion, if not praise. Dis­tant and bor­der­line cru­el in his sar­casm, Cost­ner imbues this con­trol­ling dad with a dose of humour and odd­ness that brings some much need­ed live­li­ness to the nar­ra­tive, as nei­ther Chas­tain nor Idris Elba, as her lawyer, pro­vide much energy.

Costner’s typ­i­cal­ly awk­ward screen pres­ence, com­bined with the script’s quirky sense of humour, nev­er­the­less leave a dis­qui­et­ing after­taste when the father opens up to his cagey, defen­sive daugh­ter, in what feels like the draft ver­sion of this year’s trope of the father con­fess­ing to his o spring – the bet­ter result being Michael Stuhlbarg’s deeply affect­ing turn in Call Me by Your Name.

Sorkin’s deci­sion to slight­ly alter the facts of Bloom’s sto­ry, deliv­er­ing details via flash­back as she awaits tri­al on crim­i­nal charges, is a mark of the self-aware­ness he’s dis­played in all his writ­ing. As a direct­ing choice, it proves unsat­is­fac­to­ry. If The Social Net­work is still praised for its fero­cious and sweep­ing script, David Fincher’s direc­tion is anoth­er key fac­tor in its pro­gres­sive build up of tension.

Sorkin’s cam­er­a­work and edit­ing, by con­trast, are overblown rather than vir­tu­osic, con­fused rather than bold. His tongue-in-cheek approach soon becomes irri­tat­ing, and turns Bloom’s tale of the night­mar­ish Amer­i­can Dream into a sil­ly joke instead of the thrilling and, lat­er, dev­as­tat­ing tale it so des­per­ate­ly tries to be.