Molly’s Game is a based on a true story film about the life of Molly Bloom played by Jessica Chastain. Molly was a former freestyle skier, who turned to the underbelly of Los Angeles after a career-ending injury.
Molly gets tangled up with the likes of shifty Hollywood celebrities who are no doubt future #MeToo cases and becomes an aid for an underground Poker ring. After being fed up with her douchebag boss, she decides to create her own game in Los Angeles and make six figures in the process. That is until Leonardo DiCaprio ‘Player X’ steals her game from her because he is a dick. So Molly runs to New York City and restarts her game with people she somehow doesn’t know are Russian Mobsters and that is where her troubles begin.
Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba are good leads and go about making this film more likable than it should be. Kevin Costner is the asshole dad that he had been for like 10 years now. There are elements of the real-life story that is very intriguing and the set pieces make it a watchable tale so what happened? Aaron Sorkin happened. Sorkin tries to do too much with the script to the point you wish he quit while he was ahead because Molly’s Game goes off the rails in the 3rd act.
Sorkin is trying to portray Molly Bloom a feminist hero but he forgoes common sense while running the narrative in a baffling direction. Understand here that Molly is guilty, you can try to dress up her morals all you want, but she did what she was accused of. Sorkin wants you to view Bloom’s ‘integrity’ as noble when she would rather go to prison than release the names of the people in her game (most of which don’t even like her) even AFTER the DA offers to return her 5 million that they seized WITH INTEREST as well as give her full immunity…why? Because her name is more important to her than money and freedom…what? Then what was the whole point of this movie if you were going to plead guilty regardless? As if that wasn’t baffling enough, the film ends with Bloom’s guilty plea and suddenly she is saved from any punishment…why? Because the judge says and I’m paraphrasing here “Because there are real criminals on Wall Street”….
What? Que? Now in real life, the judge cited that Bloom didn’t play a significant role in the dealings of the Russian Mob in New York, fair enough. But she gets off Scott free on the basis that there are bad people on Wall Street? What the hell does that have to do with the contents of the case? Are you trying to say that Wall Street is more dangerous than the Russian Mob? I legitimately did a Google search to see if the judge actually cited this and got nothing.
In a matter of the last twenty minutes, you lose all emotional attachment to Molly and her situation because when you get down to it, Molly is a bright bitter woman who could have been successful in any way she sought fit and her only real motivation is her daddy issues…and she still gets her way. Molly’s Game is a film that fails in almost every way films like I, Tonya succeeded.
2/5
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