Bet On The Actors Excelling And The Camerawork Underwhelming In Molly's Game

Aaron Sorkin has been writing movies and TV shows for 26 years now and somehow, in that entire period of time, he's never directed anything before his 2017 feature film Molly's Game. This is especially regarding his TV work, the guy was the creator of four different TV shows, one of which (The West Wing) ran for over 150 episodes, and he never once directed an episode of any of these programs despite frequently writing the scripts for individual episodes. Taking all of that into consideration, it's utterly shocking he's taken this long to get behind the camera but he's done just that with the motion picture Molly's Game.


Based upon a true story, the Molly of the title is Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain), a former skier whose dreams of making it to the Olympics were cut short when she suffered an accident that damaged her already vulnerable spine. With a future in sports out of the question, Bloom was stuck trying to figure out where to go with her life and that quest for clarity ends up leading her to being the assistant for Dean Keith (Jeremy Strong). Keith happens to run some underground poker tournaments that Molly Bloom is required to help with, and after observing Keith and his star-studded accomplices these games for years on end, it isn't long before Molly Bloom finds herself becoming an expert in the world of poker.

Wanting to get away from her controlling boss, Molly starts her own poker game that ends up proving to be extremely lucrative and popular. This origin story is told via flashbacks as Molly attempts to work with lawyer Charlie Jaffey (Idris Elba) on helping her stay out of prisoner after she was arrested by the FBI. The loopy plot structure of darting back-and-forth between the past and present without a concrete framing device (it isn't like Molly is telling stories of her past to Charlie, the flashbacks just come and go in the movie) takes some getting used to, but the flashbacks showing Molly's ascension to power are engaging enough to ensure that concerns about plot structure don't weigh too heavily on one's mind.

Though the movie itself goes on too long at just over 140 minutes in length (there's easily scenes or even just monologues that could have been trimmed), Molly's Game's script is one of its best assets since it allows for the sort of snappy worldly dialogue that Sorkin is as closely associated with at this point as John Wick is closely associated with killing dudes who hurt doggies. The dialogue's mostly a lot of fun, especially since Sorkin has gotten a number of actors here who seem to be relishing the chance to deliver the uniquely written verbiage the characters speak in. But the script itself isn't without flaws, in addition to the previously mentioned element of the past and present segments of the story having trouble co-existing at certain spots, there are also a handful of plot threads, namely Molly's relationship with her dad (played by Kevin Costner), that do feel underdeveloped despite the elongated running time of the whole affair seemingly offering plenty of time for such plot elements to garner more depth.

A crucial plot point of Molly Bloom refusing to hand over hard drives containing incriminating information about her poker players also lacks the oomph it obviously wants to deliver due to how most of the poker players (save for one played by Bill Camp) have mostly been depicted as obnoxious dirtbags who cheat on their wives and say racist things. Why should I be invested in them be protected when they've only been depicted as scumbags and not human beings in the movie? That plot detail really stuck in my craw, but honestly, the script Sorin's penned here is solid overall. Plenty of fun quotable lines and it's certainly helped in execution by the aforementioned fact of how good the cast is.

Jessica Chastain especially rocks the lead role which isn't too surprising to me given how well she worked with Sorkin-esque dialogue in 2016's underrated feature Miss Sloane and she totally does a great job lending a confident air to a number of her most enjoyable lines of dialogue here. The flashback portions of Molly's Game are the best parts of the whole affair thanks to how both Chastain's performance and the script are able to make Molly's transition from average human being to poker emperor riddled with subtle moments of humanity that make Molly feel like a person, one whose search for purpose keeps leading her down dead ends. Idris Elba sometimes struggles to maintain an American accent (an odd note to make because I've heard him do perfectly fine versions of that accent before?) but he makes for a great companion to Chastain throughout the film.

Sorkin's writing is working nicely here when it comes to dialogue, but his directing is...a mixed bag. He's good with actors for sure but he lacks a real visual panache when it comes to executing dialogue-heavy scenes. You'd think a writer whose all about extensive pieces of dialogue would be looking for ways to visually execute conversations in interesting ways but the camerawork for Molly's Game is mostly pedestrian. Conversation-heavy movies can easily be brought to life with memorable camerawork, directors ranging from Steven Spielberg to Yasujiro Ozu have proved this and I wish Aaron Sorkin had shown more innovation behind the camera when bringing the Molly's Game script to life. At least the performances and dialogue are good enough to make Molly's Game a solid first directorial outing for Aaron Sorkin, though hopefully he has more personality as a visualist next time around.