Molly Bloom was persuaded by her overbearing father, Larry, to ski at the Olympic games, but slipped, fell and hurt herself badly. Assuming that her father loves her two brothers more, Molly moves to Los Angeles. Instead of applying to a law school, she finds a job as a waitress, and then as a personal assistant to Dean, a real estate developer, who holds private poker games in a club. Seeing that many rich people are into poker, including Hollywood star X, Molly one day gets fired, but invites them all to a new location, her own. She earns a lot of money since they bet hundreds of thousands of dollars. When X ousts her, Molly moves to New York and finds new players, but they also include Mafia members. When she refuses a racket, a mobster enters her apartment, beats and robs her. She is finally indicted by the FBI and seeks lawyer Jaffey for help. She meets her dad again and they make up. She is convicted to a mild sentence.
This feature length debut film of the critically recognized writer Aaron Sorkin is a proportionally well made biopic, filled with densely stuffed, long dialogues, which makes it twice as talkative than other two hour films, whereas Jessica Chastain is excellent in the leading role, who is both cynical and vulnerable as the title heroine, the "poker game Queen". However, one cannot escape one observation: all these ostensibly "scandalous" underground poker games are never as interesting as Molly's intimate relationship with her family, especially her father. The poker game segment copies the dynamic, explosive style of Scorsese's "Goodfellas", yet rarely something interesting happens there, except that Molly exploits all the compulsive game addicts. A few good dialogues appear, such as when Molly narrates that an advisor set up to make the "Cinemaxx version of herself" or when she has a strong argument with her lawyer Jaffey since she is willing to plead guilty in order to at least save her name, the only thing she has left. But the real highlight of "Molly's game" is the subplot involving her relationship with her father. There is this wonderful little sequence where Molly exits an FBI hearing during a break and randomly goes to skate on ice in the park. At one point, she starts charging, as if she remembers her youth when she was skiing, and all of a sudden she hears her father's voice, telling her to "bend her knees" while skating. They later sit on a bench and have a genuine, honest father-daughter talk. He, a psychologist, tells Molly he is going to do what all the patients beg him to do: to condense a lifetime therapy in three minutes, by just giving her the answers. The way he talks to Molly—demonstrating that she is so pessimistic and negative because she sensed he was cheating on her mother, but was still sucessful—is magical, and this whole sequence is either a slice of perfection of very close to perfection. One almost wonders if the entire film should have been just about that, and ditch the whole poker main plot.
Grade:++
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