(Possible spoilers.)

Watching “Molly’s Game” seems to be the same as listening to a ‘Talking Book’ with its almost wall to wall narration by Jessica Chastain as Molly Bloom.

In Aaron Sorkin’s director’s debut, he makes the mistake of many first-timers not following sometimes less means more with this 2 hours and 20 minutes film. As the writer of the screenplay, as he is known for his rat-a-tat dialogue in his television scripts, the talk is fast but in film his characters are more stationary.

Jessica Chastain does a good job of showing how Molly Bloom became a tough, mostly unfeeling, woman when as a child her demanding father, played by Kevin Costner, training her for the U.S. Olympic Ski team, constantly tells her she isn’t good enough. Her two brothers are overachievers, just as her father is, so when she has a freak accident skiing in competition, ending her career, she looks to do something else, entertaining the idea of law school but, instead goes to Los Angeles. Taking jobs to support herself while living on a friend’s couch she eventually becomes an assistant to a man who runs an exclusive poker game for high rollers.

Molly soon moves to New York where she outsmarts her former boss and starts her own high stakes poker games having the rich and famous as her clients. She runs everything by the books legally besides offering the players more than other operations ever did in the way of luxurious snacks, drinks and comfort. Again there is nothing illegal about her operation such as though she has beautiful women working for her attending bar, being dealers, making the men as comfortable as they can they never exchange sex for money or anything else.

At one point, due to pressures of running 2-3 all-nighters a week, she starts taking drugs to get sleep and to stay awake which makes her sloppy and inadvertently gets mixed up with the Russian mob and gets caught by the FBI.

She seeks out Charlie Jaffey, played by Idris Elba, a sharp lawyer, to defend her and though he can get her a great deal with the Feds he isn’t able to convince her to name names. As she points out to him she didn’t name names in the book she had published for which, if she had, she could have gotten an advance of a million dollars instead of the thirty-five thousand she did get and she wouldn’t now.

The film is based on that book, “Molly’s Game: From Hollywood’s Elite to Wall Street’s Billionaire Boys Club, My High-Stakes Adventure in the World of Underground Poker.” In the film Molly comes across as a smart, forceful, sharp, hard as nails woman but, in only one scene, shows that she has any feelings and that is in a talk with her father who relates an incident that is never even hinted at before that talk. Men fall in love with her but she rebuffs them though she will offer help to men she sees ‘drowning’, in over their heads, becoming gambling addicts, giving cash and/or credit when needed but her feelings belong to only her.

Aaron Sorkin does keep the picture moving but too many times, talking/showing the poker games, has Molly saying too much, so rapidly that not only does it get monotonous it also becomes incomprehensible at times. There are one too many skiing scenes and, though touching, an unnecessary storyline regarding the lawyer and his daughter.

Jessica Chastain is being talked up as a Best Actress Oscar nominee, deservedly, as she really is the main reason to see “Molly’s Game” plus, if you are a fan of Sorkin’s writing, as I am.

Movie trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu4UPet8Nyc