Brief thoughts on Molly's Game.

Poker's not a game of chance, explains Molly Bloom. It's a game of skill, a back and forth production of players deceiving the others and exploiting their tells and body language, where keeping secrets to the chest is a necessity to thrive through the game. Secrets, skill, deception, perhaps that makes Bloom - dubbed the "Poker Princess" - the greatest poker player never to take part in the high stakes game, building a mini-empire out of the underground poker rings headlined by wealthy celebrities and business giants, and even when landing under the eye of the FBI, refused to let those close secrets and the names of the people within her rings be publicly known. It's a fascinating true story, and one that the film based on her book Molly's Game tackles with the same suitable wits as its signature game.

Molly's Game marks the directorial debut of Aaron Sorkin, screenwriter of The Social Network and Steve Jobs, and TV's The West Wing. And you can clearly see the kind of influence he's taken with his material here, having previously worked with the likes of David Fincher and Danny Boyle. What Sorkin does with the film, is that while it is typically very dialogue driven, as you would expect, is to have the visuals and the rapid-fire dialogue play hand in hand with each other. Although it can seldom be exhausting given the extensive wordiness, Sorkin certainly proves no slouch in managing to take the complicated inner workings of poker, and is able to lay out the nuances and the weight that comes with the game in an easily accessible manner for those not in the know. In fact, it often deliberately evokes the same kind of tricks and sleights that you would expect of those games, in order for Sorkin to give some great visual juxtaposition. Like the best poker games, Sorkin is all about using tricks and unexpected actions to help fuel the film's excitement, of shocking losses, topped off with miraculous saving graces, and those kinds of moves serve him very well.

But as is the case with Sorkin's recent films, those stories are engaging less because of the subject matter (Facebook, baseball strategy, computing), and more due to the fascinating portrayals of their main subjects. And that's certainly the case for this film's interpretation of Bloom, played by Jessica Chastain in one of her finest performances yet. Proving last year that she could nail Sorkin-esque backroom deals with Miss Sloane, Chastain feels primed and ready for the material from the very start. It's a very complicated role that she bites into, this once unprepared up-and-comer who slowly but surely makes an infamous name for herself. She's a very resourceful, very quick learning, intensely focused strategist who moves her business and her income with calculated precision, and only taking risks when absolutely necessary, and never without a safety net.

But meanwhile, focused as she is, there's also this fascinating sense of moral grayness to the things she does. If you have any knowledge of poker at all, you'll know that it's a very costly, very cutthroat pasttime built on deception, and that preys on addiction and obsession to move its profits. And during those games, some of her regular players fall into such pits, with psychology and deception slowly becoming valuable tools, with even the most experienced and top notch players refusing to back away even when burning through their savings, while more ruthless ones bend those weaknesses to their benefit. That nasty side of poker isn't exactly new knowledge, but few have been willing to go into such uncompromising detail as Sorkin does with this film. And it proves to be a mentality that stretches beyond the table, as Molly grows increasingly dependent on heavy prescriptions and cocaine in order to be at peak position, straining herself even further when working two separate locations in one night, and with such hindrances, even her keen sense of focus is slowly warped, with Chastain terrifically showing visible cracks translating Molly's broken and disparate attitude.

And Chastain proves very reliable with those icier and intense moments, as she's shown capable of doing in the past, but Molly's Game is a different beast from something like Miss Sloane, because despite the moral hang-ups that comes with the territory of poker, Molly has much more of a soul and sense of integrity behind her actions. Having grown up in a strained childhood environment, not helped by the rocky relationship shared with her pushy father (Kevin Costner), it feels as if all the hardship Molly has been witness to has really left its mark, and the kind of unhappiness tossed her way, she's unwilling to lay upon anyone else. There's an obvious parallel between Molly, and John Proctor in Arthur Miler's The Crucible, which the film makes direct reference to, likening the court case against Molly, and her refusal to reveal the names of her players, to the mass accusations of the Salem Witch Trials.

Despite the outside pressure to turn over those connected with the rings, especially from her stern but compassionate lawyer (an outstanding Idris Elba), even the grayest moral areas aren't worth the shame that would likely come attached. Families potentially ripped apart, careers and lives destroyed, to disclose it seems not only like betrayal to Molly, but deliberately inflicting the pain she knows on someone else. There's such a great honor and empathy behind all of her decisions, a sense of honor that even directly confronts whatever the morality of the viewer may lean towards. The overall ingredients work to create a fantastic, fully-dimensional character and central performance that anchors the entire film, and while some touches get a little too sentimental, and the lengthy 2+ hours don't always flow so smoothly, Sorkin's debut is a truly terrific film, making him one to eagerly watch out for in the future.


****1/2 / *****