Alternate Title: The Poker Room
One sentence synopsis: A former competitive skier builds an empire of underground poker games
before being caught up in a massive federal case against the Russian
Mafia.
Things Havoc liked: Some stories are just too good not to film, really. Molly Bloom, a
downhill skier whose career was derailed by injury, moved to Los Angeles
in 2004 and was hired to staff a Poker game out of a backroom club
called the Viper Room, catering to Hollywood celebrities. The game
expanded, and Molly first took it over, then took it big, throwing
lavish events and attracting moguls from industry, finance,
entertainment, and every other corner of the high-roller world. By
2009, she had moved her operation to New York, running one of the most
sought-after games in the country, before a 2013 raid and indictment
caused her to lose everything in a massive RICO sting aimed at the many
members of the Russian mob who were participants in her game. Along the
way she dealt with addicts, egomaniacs, mobsters, drunks, Hollywood big
shots, princes of various European and Middle Eastern royal families,
and plenty of people who fit into more than one of the above categories.
Her career came to an abrupt end in 2013 when she was caught up in a
money laundering and racketeering sting by the FBI and Justice
Departments, as part of their attempts to crush the Russian Mafia, most
of whose most prominent members were players in her game. In the
intervening years, she wrote a tell-all book (notable primarily for not
even remotely telling all), and there were a number of attempts to turn
her story into a movie, and after several abortive attempts, who has
decided to take this on, but Television's master of self-important
dialogue, Aaron Sorkin.
Molly's Game stars Jessica Chastain, an
actress I have famously had little use for over the years (see my
reviews for Zero Dark Thirty and Interstellar for more on that), as
Molly Bloom, but for all my objections to Chastain's typical style of
acting, if there's one thing 2016's The Huntsman: Winter's War taught
me, it's that I had Chastain pegged incorrectly. The problem isn't that
she can't act, the problem is that she can't act seriously.
Her attempts to emote sincerity and seriousness have always fallen
flat to me, making her sound alternately like a marionette struggling to
understand these "hu-man" emotions, or like a petulant seven-year-old
who has been denied a cookie. But give her a film or a situation in
which she's supposed to be campy, or ridiculous, or over-the-top, and
she suddenly becomes a completely different actor. And while Molly's
Game is certainly intended to be a realistic portrayal of a young woman
who simply got caught up in strange events, it's also written by Aaron
Sorkin, of The Social Network and The West Wing (and several other
things we will get to), who has one of the strongest and most
distinctive authorial voices of any screenwriter in Hollywood (yes,
moreso even than Joss Whedon). Sorkin's dialogue, no matter the setting
or medium, has always felt like written dialogue,
like something prepared in advance by a speechwriter, rather than
something people might conceivably come up with and say in a real
setting, and while that's not always a strength, it allows Chastain to
do what she's good at, giving her the sort of snappy, witty, erudite
one-liners that nobody would come up with in the spur of the moment.
The long and the short of all this is that Chastain is excellent in this
film, playing a driven young woman from a hyper-demanding background
who is subjected to the sorts of raving, savagely egomaniacal,
borderline sociopathic douchebags and pressures that are instantaneously
believable as coming from the ranks of Hollywood or high finance.
And
of course, Chastain is not alone. Idris Elba, my man-crush and yours,
plays Bloom's lawyer, Charlie Jaffey, in the typical style of an Aaron
Sorkin lawyer, meaning with wit, erudition, and snappy comebacks to
every situation. As I know several people (Hi, Colleen!) who fantasize
about Idris Elba yelling at them, this movie should provide plenty of
fodder, and Elba is, as he always is, wonderful in the role, though his
American accent this time is about as authentic as my British one.
Kevin Costner, of all people, plays Molly's father, a professor of
psychology and a helicopter parent, whose tough-love-style of
borderline-verbally-abusive behavior is intentionally played in contrast
with Costner's native salt-of-the-Earth persona. I've admitted before
that for all the garbage that Costner has made over the years (and still
continues to make, lest anyone forget Criminal), I've always liked him,
at least in the rare occasions when the director and scriptwriters
manage to get him something to say or do that is within his range.
Sorkin does, and Costner, surprisingly, proves an excellent fit for
Sorkin's stilted style, particularly in a late sequence where he sits
down with his daughter and speaks what, to him at least, is brutal
honesty. And then there's the various shitheads that Bloom encounters
throughout her career, foremost among which is Michael Cera, of all
people, as "Player X", a composite of various A-list Hollywood
celebrities who frequented Molly's games, but apparently primarily based
on Toby Maguire, or so the rumors have it. If those rumors are true,
Maguire should take real care given the tenor of Hollywood today, as
Cera plays this character as an actual raving sociopath, one who admits
that despite all the poker he plays, he actually doesn't much like the
game itself. What he likes, in his own words, is "ruining people's
lives", something he does with Iago-like gusto to everyone he meets. My
old pals Chris O'Dowd (of The Sapphires), and Jeremy Strong (of a whole bunch of crap), take smaller roles as, respectively, a drunken Irish
associate of the Russian Mafia with a heart of gold, and a Hollywood
wannabe/failed Los Angeles real estate agent with seemingly no heart
whatsoever. This is the sort of thing one runs into when one turns in
these circles, it seems. Both are superb, customarily so in O'Dowd's
case, the opposite in Strong's, with O'Dowd managing to inject some real
emotion into one of the oldest cinema character cliches in existence
(the drunken Irishman), and Strong evidencing some of the douchiest
behavior known to man outside of the White House.
Things Havoc disliked:You may have noticed by this point that I seem to be talking an awful
lot about Aaron Sorkin, and that's kind of unavoidable, and not just
because he both wrote, produced, and directed this film, his directorial
debut, in fact. Honestly the direction is fine, Sorkin has a lengthy
and well-established background in Television after all and has been
working in film for over thirty years. But when it comes to the
writing, we start to have an issue. You see, I mentioned before that
Sorkin's authorial voice is one of the strongest in Hollywood, up there
with the likes of David Mamet or Joss Whedon. This is not necessarily a
good thing. You see for all of the success that Sorkin has had, with
The West Wing, with Social Network, with Moneyball or Charlie Wilson's
War, when Sorkin has nobody to restrain him the way David Fincher did,
he generally produces works of such staggering, monumental authorial
arrogance as to inspire mocking fake-twitter feeds that long-outlast the
work in question. It was thus for Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, a
failed behind-the-scenes-at-Saturday-Night-Live show that was so
painfully preachy and unfunny as to make paint drying look like a
Megadeth concert, and wherein Sorkin famously responded to the
criticisms he was subjected to by calling all his critics
basement-dwelling virginial bloggers with no taste. It was also thus
for The Newsroom, one of the preachiest and most hamfisted television
shows ever invented, wherein Sorkin re-wrote every story of the day as
he would have reported on it with perfect hindsight, and then spent the
rest of the runtime making his characters recite endless denunciations
of strawman after strawman, particularly when it came to "the youths"
and their "blogosphere". Now, let me be clear, Molly's Game doesn't
have anything like those shows' levels of unfettered arrogance. What it does have, however, is the tendency for every character to sound the same.
You
see, with a voice this strong, this recognizable, it's clear enough to
me at this point that Sorkin doesn't know how to write anyone who isn't
just like himself, an overeducated political and cultural snob (I say
this with some endearment, as I am also an overeducated political and
cultural snob). In shows like The West Wing, which was about a group of
exceptionally intelligent and driven people at the heart of the
political system, this mattered less, as Sorkin wrote his characters the
way we'd like all of our elected officials to act and speak. With The
Social Network, he was again dealing with masters of the universe,
students at Harvard University with spectacular pedigrees and impeccable
contempt for all the lesser creatures of the world. But in Molly's
Game, despite all the high-rollers on offer, the movie is ultimately a
character study of Molly, and to a lesser extent her lawyer, none of
whom should sound the same as one another, and all of whom do, speaking
in this inflappable, ultra-witty style of hyper-stylized dialogue that
just does not exist when we are supposedly dealing with the real world.
Everyone's speach consists of the same one-liners, peppered with
references to high culture and in-jokes that it makes no sense for their
characters to be making. And while I do like movies about smart people
speaking in a smart fashion, Sorkin's voice is so overpowering that he
risks losing the humanity of what's happening. It's hard for us as an
audience to feel sorry or frightened alongside the main character when
the film has spent the entire run-time establishing them as being beyond
such mortal concerns as fright or sorrow. And none of this is helped
by Sorkin, in the last third of the film, giving into his worst habits
and spending a good portion of the movie waxing eloquently about the
injustice of the FBI seizing Molly's assets and fining her hundreds of
thousands of dollars, when in reality (as it turns out) neither actually
occurred. I don't demand all biopics stick scrupulously to the truth
of the matter, of course, but it's a bit rich to turn your film into an
excoriation of the Federal Government for having done terrible things to
poor Molly, when it did not actually do those things.
Final thoughts: All that being said though, Molly's Game is certainly an enjoyable film,
with a compelling story full of sleaze and greed and power games and,
it must be admitted, luxuriously fun dialogue at times. Even if Sorkin
makes everyone sound like himself, the fact is that his style of witty
repartee is a lot of fun to listen to, especially when good (citation
needed) actors are the ones reciting it. I don't know if it's worthy of
the Oscars that it clearly is looking for, but as a film about the
seedier side of high society and organized crime, I have seen far worse
examples, and would recommend it unhesitatingly to anyone who likes the
idea of the film, or just wants to watch Idris Elba yell for a while.
And really, who doesn't?
Next Time: Speaking of movies about women who formerly competed in Winter Olympic events...
Molly's Game stars Jessica Chastain, an
actress I have famously had little use for over the years (see my
reviews for Zero Dark Thirty and Interstellar for more on that), as
Molly Bloom, but for all my objections to Chastain's typical style of
acting, if there's one thing 2016's The Huntsman: Winter's War taught
me, it's that I had Chastain pegged incorrectly. The problem isn't that
she can't act, the problem is that she can't act seriously.
Her attempts to emote sincerity and seriousness have always fallen
flat to me, making her sound alternately like a marionette struggling to
understand these "hu-man" emotions, or like a petulant seven-year-old
who has been denied a cookie. But give her a film or a situation in
which she's supposed to be campy, or ridiculous, or over-the-top, and
she suddenly becomes a completely different actor. And while Molly's
Game is certainly intended to be a realistic portrayal of a young woman
who simply got caught up in strange events, it's also written by Aaron
Sorkin, of The Social Network and The West Wing (and several other
things we will get to), who has one of the strongest and most
distinctive authorial voices of any screenwriter in Hollywood (yes,
moreso even than Joss Whedon). Sorkin's dialogue, no matter the setting
or medium, has always felt like written dialogue,
like something prepared in advance by a speechwriter, rather than
something people might conceivably come up with and say in a real
setting, and while that's not always a strength, it allows Chastain to
do what she's good at, giving her the sort of snappy, witty, erudite
one-liners that nobody would come up with in the spur of the moment.
The long and the short of all this is that Chastain is excellent in this
film, playing a driven young woman from a hyper-demanding background
who is subjected to the sorts of raving, savagely egomaniacal,
borderline sociopathic douchebags and pressures that are instantaneously
believable as coming from the ranks of Hollywood or high finance.
And
of course, Chastain is not alone. Idris Elba, my man-crush and yours,
plays Bloom's lawyer, Charlie Jaffey, in the typical style of an Aaron
Sorkin lawyer, meaning with wit, erudition, and snappy comebacks to
every situation. As I know several people (Hi, Colleen!) who fantasize
about Idris Elba yelling at them, this movie should provide plenty of
fodder, and Elba is, as he always is, wonderful in the role, though his
American accent this time is about as authentic as my British one.
Kevin Costner, of all people, plays Molly's father, a professor of
psychology and a helicopter parent, whose tough-love-style of
borderline-verbally-abusive behavior is intentionally played in contrast
with Costner's native salt-of-the-Earth persona. I've admitted before
that for all the garbage that Costner has made over the years (and still
continues to make, lest anyone forget Criminal), I've always liked him,
at least in the rare occasions when the director and scriptwriters
manage to get him something to say or do that is within his range.
Sorkin does, and Costner, surprisingly, proves an excellent fit for
Sorkin's stilted style, particularly in a late sequence where he sits
down with his daughter and speaks what, to him at least, is brutal
honesty. And then there's the various shitheads that Bloom encounters
throughout her career, foremost among which is Michael Cera, of all
people, as "Player X", a composite of various A-list Hollywood
celebrities who frequented Molly's games, but apparently primarily based
on Toby Maguire, or so the rumors have it. If those rumors are true,
Maguire should take real care given the tenor of Hollywood today, as
Cera plays this character as an actual raving sociopath, one who admits
that despite all the poker he plays, he actually doesn't much like the
game itself. What he likes, in his own words, is "ruining people's
lives", something he does with Iago-like gusto to everyone he meets. My
old pals Chris O'Dowd (of The Sapphires), and Jeremy Strong (of a whole bunch of crap), take smaller roles as, respectively, a drunken Irish
associate of the Russian Mafia with a heart of gold, and a Hollywood
wannabe/failed Los Angeles real estate agent with seemingly no heart
whatsoever. This is the sort of thing one runs into when one turns in
these circles, it seems. Both are superb, customarily so in O'Dowd's
case, the opposite in Strong's, with O'Dowd managing to inject some real
emotion into one of the oldest cinema character cliches in existence
(the drunken Irishman), and Strong evidencing some of the douchiest
behavior known to man outside of the White House.
You
see, with a voice this strong, this recognizable, it's clear enough to
me at this point that Sorkin doesn't know how to write anyone who isn't
just like himself, an overeducated political and cultural snob (I say
this with some endearment, as I am also an overeducated political and
cultural snob). In shows like The West Wing, which was about a group of
exceptionally intelligent and driven people at the heart of the
political system, this mattered less, as Sorkin wrote his characters the
way we'd like all of our elected officials to act and speak. With The
Social Network, he was again dealing with masters of the universe,
students at Harvard University with spectacular pedigrees and impeccable
contempt for all the lesser creatures of the world. But in Molly's
Game, despite all the high-rollers on offer, the movie is ultimately a
character study of Molly, and to a lesser extent her lawyer, none of
whom should sound the same as one another, and all of whom do, speaking
in this inflappable, ultra-witty style of hyper-stylized dialogue that
just does not exist when we are supposedly dealing with the real world.
Everyone's speach consists of the same one-liners, peppered with
references to high culture and in-jokes that it makes no sense for their
characters to be making. And while I do like movies about smart people
speaking in a smart fashion, Sorkin's voice is so overpowering that he
risks losing the humanity of what's happening. It's hard for us as an
audience to feel sorry or frightened alongside the main character when
the film has spent the entire run-time establishing them as being beyond
such mortal concerns as fright or sorrow. And none of this is helped
by Sorkin, in the last third of the film, giving into his worst habits
and spending a good portion of the movie waxing eloquently about the
injustice of the FBI seizing Molly's assets and fining her hundreds of
thousands of dollars, when in reality (as it turns out) neither actually
occurred. I don't demand all biopics stick scrupulously to the truth
of the matter, of course, but it's a bit rich to turn your film into an
excoriation of the Federal Government for having done terrible things to
poor Molly, when it did not actually do those things.
Final Score: 7.5/10
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