SORKIN’S GAME ALWAYS CLEVER, SO IS ‘MOLLY’S GAME’

By Dominique Paul Noth

Jessica Chastain (left) and the real Molly Bloom she plays in
'Molly's Game.'

Director-writer Aaron Sorkin is moving so fast from the get-go of  “Molly’s Game” that audiences better know something about high-stakes poker and the millionaire rollers addicted to Playboy bunny-run tables where millions change hands on every pot and the money chips are digitally minted.

Sorkin has always been speed-demon at his signature best, from “West Wing” to “Newsroom” and movies as writer “A Few Good Men” and “The Social Network.” Here he drops even more historical and literary references than usual because the Molly Bloom of the title not only was an Olympic skier and operator of the most famous (notorious?) poker game in the nation, she also boasted an IQ of 173 and wrote a best-seller of the same  “Molly’s Game” name. 

By cleverly rearranging sequences and inventing several exchanges, Sorkin sticks close to a fascinating story.  Even without the “walk and talk”  technique which dominated “West Wing” and became a Sorkin script cliché, there is no mistaking his dialog rhythm, flights of rhetorical greatness  and electric pace – and even one traditional crutch that here he sure returns to way too hard:  a finale psychiatric evaluation of the protagonist.

But Sorkin as a director knows how to serve Sorkin the writer – rapid cuts back and forth in time, comic introduction and misdirections on main characters to keep the suspense, sharp major performances (mainly Idris Elba as a dubious lawyer and Jessica Chastain, wearing more bodice exposing dresses than usual and replacing Molly’s persona with her own).

Pretty well wasted (the script is way too obvious) is Kevin Costner as either the worst or the wisest father in captivity – take your pick.  But there is a wonderful cameo by a much used but much unknown actor, Bill Camp, as a gambler who totally loses his traditional cool.

No question, the movie is a romp through a high-rolling world of wealthy celebrities and secret Russian mobsters who made Molly wealthy and then tripped her into illegality, but not the illegality the government came after.

Sorkin has made a fun ride with an unlikely heroine into a speedy watchable movie with top production values –and he is probably the best known name in Oscar’s adapted screenplay nominations. But “Molly’s Game” is nowhere near the fresh artistry of other 2017 offerings,

Which is a shame. I think Sorkin is one of our best commercial writers and here proves he has the chops for directing. Someday that may produce a great movie.

For all Noth's recent film reviews scroll domsdomain.blogspot.comAbout the author: Noth has been a professional journalist since the 1960s, and a founding figure of the American Theatre Critics Association.  After stints as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, he was also  for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic on his way to becoming the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs and Internet consumer news. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with active historic archives at milwaukeelabor.org.  In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  He also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee.