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Molly Bloom hustles and jostles. She sizzles and dazzles, and whatever room she’s in, she’s totally in command—that is, until she isn’t. Even then, though, she’s irrepressibly verbal—able to articulate everything, all the time, in ways that are far quicker and cleverer than the average human ever could.

In other words, Molly Bloom is an Aaron Sorkin character, even though she’s a real person with a really extraordinary tale to tell: The “Poker Princess” made a fortune running high-stakes games for the wealthy and powerful. And “Molly’s Game” marks the directorial debut of the writer of “The West Wing,” “ The Social Network ” and “ A Few Good Men ,” among many others. (He’s working from his own screenplay, of course.) So if you’re a fan of his particular brand of impossibly intelligent characters exchanging rat-a-tat dialogue, you’ll be in heaven here. The hose is on full blast for two-plus hours. Nothing and no one seems to be holding him back, for better and for worse.

And in Jessica Chastain , Sorkin has found the perfect match for his densely witty repartee. As she’s proven throughout her career—particularly in “ Zero Dark Thirty ” and “ Miss Sloane ”—Chastain has the presence, smarts and dexterity to take this kind of tricky material and make it sing. Despite her cynical, detached demeanor, she’s a force of nature in a blowout and a bandage dress—impossible to stop watching and listening to as she narrates giant chunks of “Molly’s Game” in wryly humorous fashion.

Sorkin’s film is a bit overlong but it mostly moves briskly, especially off the top, as Molly informs us in a lengthy voiceover about her past as an Olympic-caliber skier and the freak accident that drastically changed her life trajectory. Reminiscent of the variety of ways Adam McKay presented complicated information in “ The Big Short ,” Sorkin plays with images and graphics, grabbing us with high energy from the very start.

Inspired by Bloom’s memoir of the same name, “Molly’s Game” bounces back and forth in time between Molly’s arrest by the FBI for running an illegal gambling operation and her efforts to persuade a New York lawyer (an excellent Idris Elba ) to represent her and flashbacks to how she built her glittering empire. Sorkin also goes ever further back to Molly’s youth, when she showed early traces of her independent, rebellious streak by sassing her demanding psychologist dad (a stern Kevin Costner ). (As the teenage Molly, Samantha Isler matches up beautifully with Chastain’s voice and demeanor.)

To prove her worth and distance herself from the competition of her overachieving brothers, Molly moved to Los Angeles rather than going to law school as she’d originally planned. There she stumbled into organizing a weekly, underground poker game for a would-be Hollywood player ( Jeremy Strong ) at the “Cobra Lounge”—a stand-in for the Sunset Strip’s infamous Viper Room. Sorkin lets us learn the game right along with Molly—the terminology, the strategy, the psychology. (I’m not a poker expert in the slightest, but people who are tell me “Molly’s Game” gets it right.) A quick study, Molly wrests the game away from him in no time and ups the ante (literally and figuratively) as she glamorously makes it her own. Her transformation is dizzying but Chastain’s confident, grounded nature makes it work.

In a rare villainous role, Michael Cera is chilling as a famous actor known as “Player X” (but supposedly based on Tobey Maguire ), one of Molly’s earliest regulars who’s more interested in destroying the competition than winning millions for himself. On the other end of the spectrum is a devastating Bill Camp as a decent guy and a strong player who endures a whirlwind series of days in Molly’s high-end hotel suite poker room.

But the throughline for all these anecdotes is the strengthening relationship between Molly and her lawyer, the only other person who can consistently match her in the rapid-fire dialogue department. Chastain and Elba have crackling chemistry from the start—you can practically feel the energy of them leaning into each other. Either you’ll be able to give yourself over to Sorkin’s heightened world or you won’t, but the scenes between Chastain and Elba certainly make it easier.

Which makes it all the more jarring and unfortunate that both he and Costner’s character end up explaining Molly to Molly when she’s at her lowest point. The scene with Costner is particularly contrived; the redemption it depicts is intended as a much-needed moment of catharsis, but it ends up feeling like smug mansplaining.

Ever the fierce competitor, Molly has found a way to rule in a male-dominated world. If only “Molly’s Game” had let her win in the end on her own fascinating, complicated terms.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film Credits

Molly's Game (2017)

Rated R for language, drug content and some violence.

140 minutes

Jessica Chastain as Molly Bloom

Idris Elba as Charlie Jaffey

Kevin Costner as Larry Bloom

Michael Cera as Player X

Brian d'Arcy James as Bad Brad

Aaron Sorkin

Writer (book)

Molly Bloom

Cinematographer

Charlotte Bruus Christensen
Elliot Graham
Josh Schaeffer
Alan Baumgarten
Daniel Pemberton

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Review: The Big and Minor Stakes of ‘Molly’s Game’

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By Manohla Dargis

Dec. 24, 2017

Words aren’t really exchanged in “Molly’s Game,” Aaron Sorkin’s directorial debut; they’re smashed like racquetballs. Life comes at you fast, and so do the words that rush out of Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain) as she relays her tale. A poker entrepreneur who ran a high-stakes game before slamming into trouble, Molly is a speed-talker and somewhat of a close one, too. She delivers stretches of her story in a voice-over that suggests that Mr. Sorkin wrote and directed his movie with a stopwatch in one hand and a DVD of Howard Hawks’s motor-mouth comedy “His Girl Friday” in the other.

“His Girl Friday” (1940) has been clocked at 240 words per minute, which sounds about right for the tempo Mr. Sorkin has embraced in “Molly’s Game.” Its titular poker princess is based on the real Molly Bloom, who had a moment a while back when she was busted for running a high-stakes game, her world imploding when the F.B.I. came knocking. She wrote a book, naming players in games she helped run and others she ran — Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Affleck and Tobey Maguire — which earned her acreage in Vanity Fair magazine. Her book’s full title is: “Molly’s Game: From Hollywood’s Elite to Wall Street’s Billionaire Boys Club, My High-Stakes Adventure in the World of Underground Poker.”

Aaron Sorkin Annotates Aaron Sorkin

Aaron Sorkin annotates the script he wrote for his directorial debut, “Molly’s Game,” starring Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba.

The movie more or less follows the trajectory laid out by that mouthful of a title, though Mr. Sorkin modestly amends it for dramatic purposes. It begins with an early devastating, life-altering ski-crash that occurs when Molly is an Olympic hopeful . Her slope dreams having come to an end, she postpones law school and moves to Los Angeles. (“I wanted to be young for a while in warm weather.”) There, she flops in a friend’s apartment and ends up working at a club, hustling overpriced vodka to guys who think they’re players. She catches the eye of one, Dean (Jeremy Strong), who hires her to help run a high-end poker game where the first buy-in is $10,000.

The movie takes off once the cards start shuffling. Molly watches and learns, absorbing the game’s rituals and language while charming the all-male players. She’s a quick study and a committed Googler, looking up poker terminology and music for gambling away money (Kenny Rogers). With his editors, Mr. Sorkin gives Molly’s poker education snap, cutting from shot to shot — from a drink being poured to a slammed-down stack of chips — and turning images into near-hieroglyphics. One of the editors, Alan Baumgarten, worked on David O. Russell’s “ American Hustle ,” a movie that, like “Molly’s Game,” owes a large debt to Martin Scorsese’s native-son crime stories, including “Casino.”

The stakes are rather less vital in “Molly’s Game,” which mostly tracks how a shrewd young woman threw fancy gambling parties for very important and self-important men with exceedingly deep pockets. Once Molly has stopped Googling, her entrepreneurial juices start flowing and she realizes that she could be running her own lucrative game. She does, setting one up at a fancy hotel and trading her nice-girl blah for showier makeup, designer threads and deeper décolletage. The players follow her, including a major star known only as Player X, who Michael Cera — in a wonderful, insinuatingly creepy performance — turns into a portrait of Hollywood entitlement and moral rot.

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Molly's Game Reviews

For a film that prides itself on being based on a true story, Molly's Game often relies on moments that are too coincidental, too easy. Yet, there's nothing here to suggest that Sorkin won't eventually figure things out behind the camera.

Full Review | Dec 1, 2023

This is A-OK crowdpleasing fare: for uncomplicated entertainment, I doubt I’ll do better while here.

Full Review | Jan 11, 2023

It’s one part invigorating character study and one part stunning expose. It features a trifecta of top-notch performances from Elba, Costner, and especially Chastain.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 24, 2022

Aaron Sorkin's current mode of zeroing in on a complex, highly intelligent, contemporary biographical subject, and then dissecting that individual with his sharp dialogue and narrative structure, continues in Molly's Game.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 16, 2022

Sorkin has always been an actor's writer, and Chastain revels in his dense-but-flowing dialogue. Her performance is the key to Molly's Game's success.

Full Review | Nov 4, 2021

Jessica Chastain shows us both her resolve and her vulnerability and the scene near the end with Kevin Costner as Bloom's father is one of the best of the year.

All the overt gender politics makes Molly's Game seem like a timely film.

Jessica Chastain delivers Aaron Sorkin's densely worded script with lightning rapidity.

A highly complex, completely fascinating and quite controversial truth-based character...

As director, though, Sorkin proves here that he's got the chops.

Full Review | Original Score: A- | Aug 10, 2021

Aaron Sorkin and Jessica Chastain managed to convey what it is like to have integrity and drive in equal measure as a woman in a world designed by men.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 29, 2021

You just have to decide if the in-the-moment experience is enough. For me, at least this time, I think it was.

Full Review | Jul 20, 2021

Jessica Chastain is on fine form in Aaron Sorkin's rapid-fire directorial debut.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | May 18, 2021

In an unfortunately obvious way, 'Molly's Game' explores the gender gap of power while telling a salacious story of powerful men with dirty little secrets and the women who keep them.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Apr 12, 2021

Overplays its hand. It's neither a searing indictment of high-stakes illegal gambling nor a psychological study of its main character. Instead it's a pair of deuces when it should have been a full house.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Feb 3, 2021

Despite the irritating editing choices, it's difficult to dismiss the design of the characters - and the exceptional performances by Chastain and Elba.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Dec 5, 2020

I highly suggest you watch it. Jessica Chastain, Idris Elba, and Kevin Costner are aces. Aaron Sorkin's script couldn't be sharper.

Full Review | Nov 10, 2020

Whilst it undoubtedly lacks in places of execution, Chastain brings it home with an outstanding, no holds barred performance.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 26, 2020

As a screenplay, Molly's Game is good -- even quite good at times. As a feature film, it's less than the sum of its parts.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jul 23, 2020

When it peaks, "Molly's Game" provides a thrilling, tension-filled glimpse into the glamorous and seedy world of high-stakes back-room poker games. It's unfortunate the film ends with a fizzle, not the pop it deserves,

Full Review | Original Score: B | Jul 1, 2020

Molly's Game Is Pure Aaron Sorkin, for Better and for Worse

Jessica Chastain anchors the West Wing creator’s directorial debut, a dramatic retelling of an underground poker mogul’s rise and fall.

Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba in a still from 'Molly's Game'

“Sit down,” Larry Bloom (Kevin Costner) says to his daughter Molly (Jessica Chastain) near the end of Aaron Sorkin’s directorial debut, Molly’s Game . “I’m going to give you three years of therapy in three minutes.” It’s a line seemingly meant to draw scoffs and eye-rolls, a cherry on top of the ostentatious 140-minute sundae that is this movie—a dramatic retelling of the rise and fall of a real-life underground-poker mogul. Sorkin has been one of Hollywood’s premier screenwriters for decades, creating the TV hit The West Wing and scripting films like The Social Network , Moneyball , and Steve Jobs . For years, Sorkin’s rat-a-tat conversation has been interpreted by famed directors like David Fincher and Mike Nichols. Now, we’re finally getting the unfiltered version. Buckle up.

If you’re fond of Sorkin’s script flourishes (in which his characters lob whole thesauruses of dialogue at each other with practiced ease), his nesting-doll plot structure (which reveals further story depths by cutting backward and forward in various timelines), and his love of long, mission-statement monologues, then Molly’s Game is for you. The biopic digs into the differences between public and private perceptions, topics that have long fascinated Sorkin. It’s also anchored by a steely, assured performance from Chastain, an actress who was born to deliver Sorkin’s soliloquies. Ultimately, I had a great time watching the film, even if it outstayed its welcome by about 20 minutes.

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There are very few Hollywood screenwriters these days who can stir up auteurist fascination by themselves. For all of Sorkin’s scripting foibles, there’s a delight to seeing them shine through each of his projects, no matter who’s behind the camera. In adapting the memoir of Molly Bloom, who ran elite poker games for millionaires and celebrities in Los Angeles and New York before getting busted by the FBI, Sorkin has given viewers another tale of unusual fame (having written about presidents, baseball managers, and tech CEOs in the past). But in directing the film himself, he’s shed new light on his deepest interests.

In the hands of Fincher, who made The Social Network , a Sorkin script was haunting, even maniacal, turning the rise of the Facebook inventor Mark Zuckerberg into a tale of a driven, sociopathic conqueror. Danny Boyle, who directed Steve Jobs , framed that story as a glimpse into the life of a remote godlike being, simultaneously a hellish nuisance and a divine inspiration to the people around him. Rob Reiner made The American President into a swooning, autumnal hymn to political idealism, a quality thought dead in the mid-1990s.

Sorkin has always been fascinated with power. But in Molly’s Game , he’s found a new kind of hero—one who’s just as successful as the real-life figures he’s profiled before, though she’s less interested in the spotlight. As the film begins, Molly is under investigation by the FBI for her alleged links to the Russian mafia, whose bosses took part in her poker games, and she hires a lawyer, Charlie Jaffey (Idris Elba), who tells her the Feds are just fishing for information on the people she rubbed shoulders with. No deal, says Molly. There are confidences she won’t betray.

At the same time, the viewer is shown the beginning of Molly’s rise, as she parlays a job as an assistant to an LA real-estate mogul (Jeremy Strong) into a gig running his poker game, which she spins off into her own enterprise. Soon enough, the rich and influential are clamoring for a seat at her table, partly because of the famous actor always sitting at it, whom she only calls “Player X” (Michael Cera). Sorkin also digs into Molly’s ambitious youth, when she’s a skier trying to make the Olympic team, pushed by her aggressively intellectual father, Larry.

It’s the Hollywood section of the movie that’s the most fun. Sorkin stacks the poker table with wonderful character actors like Bill Camp and Brian d’Arcy James, and tells horrifyingly wacky stories about the millions of dollars these men would squander in the name of ego. At the center of it is Player X, a composite character who represents the most insidious, amoral kind of celebrity, one interested in emotionally dominating competitors as well as bankrupting them. Cera, clad in a ratty hoodie and playing the part with casual callousness, never leans into the mega-star wattage of the actors he’s supposedly standing in for, and he’s all the more magnetic as a result. It’s a sensational performance.

The rest of Molly’s Game is a mixed bag, but as a longtime fan of Sorkin’s work, I was fine to ride the rollercoaster, even if it meant wincing through some of the more tiresome material. Molly’s downfall in New York is overlong and tough to watch, given how much we’ve been prepared for it by the script’s many flash-forwards. Her relationship with her father, the epitome of a Type-A control freak, is not particularly interesting, but it becomes especially grating when it’s offered up as a grander metaphor for her clashes with many sorts of powerful men throughout her life.

When Costner offers the viewer “three years of therapy in three minutes,” he’s basically attempting to sum up the movie in a sweeping monologue. It’s a classic Sorkin trip, but it feels superfluous—Molly’s relationship with her dad is just one prosaic piece of a much bigger puzzle. It could be lifted out of the film easily, considering how much more entertaining it is to watch her match wits with her lawyer, Charlie, who tries to poke at the complexity of her moral high ground. (She named some names in her best-selling autobiography, but refused to betray others to the FBI.)

Viewers also don’t need Costner to take things over at the end, because Chastain is doing just fine on her own. She’s long excelled at playing commanding, if emotionally locked-down, protagonists in films like Zero Dark Thirty, Interstellar, and Miss Sloane. Molly’s Game is another tour de force, a perfect match of script and actress, where Chastain captures her character’s fascinating combination of ambition, ruthlessness, and street smarts. Even if Molly’s Game is a tad too long and a mite too exposition-heavy, its star alone is worth the price of admission.

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‘molly’s game’: film review | tiff 2017.

Jessica Chastain stars as Molly Bloom, who ran the world's most exclusive high-stakes poker game, in Aaron Sorkin's directorial debut 'Molly's Game.'

By Todd McCarthy

Todd McCarthy

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Quite aside from its considerable merit as a singular story neatly told, it’s a good bet that Molly’s Game packs more voiceover narration than any Hollywood feature ever made, which is to say that it’s practically papered with it wall-to-wall. Fortunately, the words have been written by the ever-eloquent Aaron Sorkin and are spoken with skill and speed by Jessica Chastain as a way of telling, in as much detail as a mainstream film could allow, the dense and complicated story of Hollywood and Wall Street high-stakes poker den mother Molly Bloom. In his overdue directorial debut, Sorkin both entertains and makes you lean in to absorb every detail of this wild tale, which boasts a stellar cast to help tell it. Audiences of some sophistication, and especially denizens of Hollywood and upscale New York, will eat it up; the boonies not at all.

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Entertainment /

Molly’s Game is proof that Aaron Sorkin directs exactly like he writes

Jessica chastain rules the world of underground poker.

By Bryan Bishop

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Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our brief breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review comes from the Toronto International Film Festival.

As a screenwriter, Aaron Sorkin has developed such a signature voice and style that certain elements can simply be described with his name alone. Extended monologues of endlessly perfect prose and wordplay, rapid-fire banter as characters walk and talk, heroes with an overdeveloped sense of their own moral superiority; they’re all Sorkin-esque , and it usually doesn’t take more than a single scene to suss out who’s behind the typewriter.

But with his latest film, Molly’s Game , Sorkin is stepping into the role of director for the first time. It’s the based-on-true-events story of Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain), a woman who ran high-stakes underground poker rings in Hollywood and New York before ending up on the wrong end of a federal investigation. As it turns out, Sorkin the director is very much like Sorkin the screenwriter. His film is full of grand stylistic flourishes and epic emotional gestures. And as always, the impassioned Sorkin-esque monologue rules the day.

But wearing two hats also appears to have let the writer-director become a better critic of his own work. Molly’s Game is the best of Sorkin, with many of his problematic tendencies removed, resulting in a tremendously entertaining film that turns the prolific writer into a filmmaking double-threat in one fell swoop.

What’s the genre?

Molly’s Game is arguably a crime drama, but simply calling it that sells the film a bit short. It’s also part biography, part legal thriller, and part comedy — but if we’re going to stick to a broader label, crime drama it shall be.

What’s it about?

Given Sorkin’s fondness for toying with structure, it shouldn’t be a shock that Molly’s Game jumps around multiple timelines. The streamlined version goes something like this: Molly Bloom is an aspiring Olympic athlete whose dreams are crushed after a freak accident. Moving to Los Angeles, she helps run an underground poker game for Hollywood actors and elites, which she then turns into her own thriving business. The film jumps between that timeline, and one several years later, as Molly works with her lawyer Charlie Jaffey (Idris Elba) to defend herself against federal charges.

What’s it really about?

There are a lot of themes kicking around in Sorkin’s script, several of which are handily spelled out in one particularly amusing scene where Molly’s psychologist father (Kevin Costner) gives her several years worth of “accelerated therapy” in one conversation. But ultimately, this is a film about resilience and sticking to convictions. Once Molly’s hopes of being an Olympic skier are washed away, she’s forced to reinvent herself — and creating her poker empire requires her to constantly face down threats from the forces trying to get in her way. Competitors, unhappy players, Russian mobsters; they’re all ready to stop Molly from succeeding, and she’s only able to achieve her success through sheer tenacity — and an intense work ethic.

When dealing with the investigation in the other storyline, she’s given multiple opportunities to cut deals and take easy outs. But she constantly feels it would violate her own moral code to sell out the players who trusted her in the first place. It probably sounds a little strange to be talking about ethics when it comes to a movie about an underground poker ring, but Molly is a Sorkin character, and it’s incredibly important to her that her principles on this point are unimpeachable.

Is it good?

Molly’s Game is tremendous fun, and Sorkin threads together the storylines and themes with ease. The movie never stops moving, propelled by both the script and the impressive performances. In the past, many of Sorkin’s female characters have been problematic, but Molly is an unstoppable force of nature, with Chastain working Sorkin’s dialogue like few actors can. At one point in the film, Idris Elba delivers a thundering speech that’s so impassioned, the audience I saw the film with broke into spontaneous applause. The supporting roles are flawlessly cast as well, with sharp, comedic performances from Chris O’Dowd, Michael Cera, and Brian d'Arcy James.

The one thing that threatens to detract from Molly’s Game is an opening sequence that’s overstuffed with directorial flourishes and affectations. It’s as if Sorkin was so concerned with proving that he’s a legitimate director that he tried to make the entire case with a single sequence, and the result is an opening that’s simply trying too hard. But soon after, Sorkin the director settles into his groove, capitalizing on the script and the performers at his disposal, and the movie just hums.

What should it be rated?

This one should be rated “R.” There are many reasons to point to, but one particular scene of brutal violence sealed the ratings deal for me.

How can I actually watch it?

Molly’s Game is scheduled for American release on November 22nd.

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Jessica Chastain has a winning hand in Aaron Sorkin's electric Molly's Game : EW review

For the past 25 years, Aaron Sorkin has had one of the snappiest and most singular writing voices in Hollywood. If you’ve spent any time watching The West Wing , Sports Night , and The Newsroom on the small screen or A Few Good Men , The Social Network , and Moneyball on the silver one, what you probably responded to was his rat-a-tat volleys of dialogue. His characters always have the perfect comeback — the type of rapid-fire wise-guy pep-pill patter that characters in old Howard Hawks movies used to fire off at close range. His characters don’t just walk while they talk, they’re doing verbal handstands, intellectual somersaults, and whirligig trapeze dismounts. Of course, no one talks like this in real life. But that’s not the point. The point of watching a Sorkin show or movie is be transported to an alternate universe where we all feel smarter, funnier, and just better.

With a gift as unique as Sorkin’s, it was always only a matter of when — not if — he would try his hand at directing one of his own scripts. Still, who could’ve predicted that he’d be such a natural behind the camera the first time around? Aside from a few misdemeanor writerly indulgences, Sorkin’s fast-and-funny new morality tale, Molly’s Game , doesn’t feel like a directorial debut. It feels like an assured story told by a seasoned pro. Sorkin grafts his signature staccato lines onto the true story of Molly Bloom — a former Olympic skier who would end up channeling her iron will into more illicit ventures. Namely, running one of the country’s biggest and most exclusive underground poker games. That is, until the feds finally crashed the party. Sorkin, who’s always seemed more comfortable with alpha male types, was smart (or exceedingly lucky) to cast Jessica Chastain as his heroine, Molly. The film is easily the best showcase she’s had since Zero Dark Thirty . Still scarred by a complicated relationship with her overbearing father (Kevin Costner), Chastain’s Molly has created a hard shell to protect herself. She’s very good at pulling secrets out of others (especially the men who wager fortunes in her games), but doesn’t reveal much about herself. Sorkin’s fizzy dialogue is perfectly suited to both her whirring intelligence and her elastic ethics. She thinks she can fast-talk her way out of trouble. But, of course, she can’t.

Chastain tells Molly’s story through voiceovers and flashbacks — two overworked narrative devices that usually signal trouble. But here, it works in the same way that it worked in Martin Scorsese’s criminal confessionals Goodfellas and The Wolf of Wall Street . The story toggles back and forth between Molly’s glitzy poker-queen past and her less glitzy, under-indictment present. In that past, she lures fat cats and movie stars (including a terrifically jerky Michael Cera, who may or may not be playing Tobey Maguire) to pony up big money to play in her invite-only games. In her present, she selectively unspools her crimes to her not-quite-buying-it defense attorney played by Idris Elba — who gives and takes like Cary Grant to her Rosalind Russell.

It isn’t until the homestretch when the movie, which until that point is zipping along like a Formula One car, finally hits a few potholes. He tries too hard to make puzzle pieces fit into places they don’t belong. Things get a bit clunky and overly convenient, including a scene with Costner that feels like it should have been flagged by someone. Still, Molly’s Game is a cool, crackling, confident film that appeals to your intelligence instead of insulting it. At the movies, it may be the closest we’ll get to a Christmas miracle. A–

Film Review: ‘Molly’s Game’

'Social Network' screenwriter Aaron Sorkin deals Jessica Chastain a winning hand in his splashy, speechy directorial debut, set in the world of underground poker.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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'Molly's Game' Review: Jessica Chastain Plays Molly Bloom

Aaron Sorkin talks a good game, so it should come as no surprise that his directorial debut — surprisingly cinematic for someone so voluble, in which Jessica Chastain plays self-made gambling madam Molly Bloom, who built a multi-million-dollar poker empire that managed to attract a lot of unwanted attention (much of it on account of her memoir, “Molly’s Game”) — amounts to a series of mile-a-minute monologues, stacked back-to-back for the better part of 140 minutes. Still, for a writer accused of misogyny in the past, “Molly’s Game” delivers one of the screen’s great female parts — a dense, dynamic, compulsively entertaining affair, whose central role makes stunning use of Chastain’s stratospheric talent.

Whereas most Hollywood directors aspire to the show-don’t-tell school of screenwriting, Sorkin clearly subscribes to a different philosophy: tell more, tell it faster, and then re-tell it in different words for added effect. And guess what? That strategy works wonders in a film that’s ultimately about sizing up what exactly the competition has on you, and then calling their bluff. At the end of the day, movies and poker are about the same thing: stakes.

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Still, more of a magician than a traditional card dealer, Sorkin has plenty of tricks up his sleeve, none more effective than his choice of leading lady: In what was basically the role “The Sopranos” daughter Jamie-Lynn Sigler was born to play — the sexy, yet shady lady who organized an illegal gambling ring at which A-listers like Tobey Maguire, Leonardo DiCaprio and Ben Affleck were alleged to have played — Sorkin instead casts Chastain, the redheaded girl-next-door who could grow up to be President.

Chastain’s not the type, but she’s a star with an instinct for great material, and as such, the character adapts to fit her persona, rather than the other way around (the real Bloom comes across more like the call girl who brought down Eliot Spitzer). “Molly’s Game” is Chastain’s movie, and she’s demonstrating once again what we’ve seen in everything from “Zero Dark Thirty” to “A Most Violent Year”: No matter how powerful the men around her, Chastain is perfectly capable of being in control — and that’s not to be taken lightly in an industry that provides an alarming deficit of stand-their-ground female role models (even those who are technically breaking the law).

“Molly’s Game” introduces its protagonist and narrator as a would-be Olympic skier, going full-Sorkin as she talks circles around the subject — which in this case is why she quit the sport (a devastating back injury) and went back to school. The accident seems to drive a wedge in Molly’s already strained relationship with her father (Kevin Costner), a tough-love psychologist, so she shifts her attention to making money. As written, Molly is wicked-smart, assertive and unintimidated by powerful men, which allows her to put up with douchebag boss. It also means she’s savvy enough to seize her chance after he introduces her to the world of underground poker, where the buy-in is $10,000 and some have been known to lose nearly a million dollars.

When her boss tries to cut her out of the loop, Molly takes his contact list and establishes her own rival poker showroom, poaching his players and raising the stakes. Sorkin’s script makes it clear that many of the rich and famous who agreed to follow her did so because a movie star made the switch. (Michael Cera plays the celeb in question, supplying a familiar face and borderline-surreal comedic streak without upstaging Chastain as the film’s true star.) But they stayed because Molly was good at her job, which is true even as her precarious operation starts to implode.

When the boys eventually try to elbow her out of the business, Molly moves to New York and assembles an even more exclusive game with an even bigger buy-in, but things start to unravel as she develops a drug habit and accidentally (allegedly?) opens the game to members of three different Russian crime families. This in turn attracts the attention of the Feds, which brings us back to the beginning, when Molly is arrested and sued by the United States government, who hope the incredibly well-connected power-dealer can be pressured to spill details on her regulars. The way Sorkin has assembled the film, the timeline jumps between Molly’s court case (in the “present”) and the almost unbelievable backstory that brought her there (as reported in her memoir), but he’s a firm believer that her book ended just as things were getting really interesting, seizing her arrest and trial as a framing device for a story that’s otherwise an awful lot like “Rounders” or “House of Games,” minus the juicy con-man twists.

Sorkin approaches Molly as an earnest and upstanding citizen — practically a crusader of sorts, and Chastain plays her with practically the same conviction she did a power-lobbyist in last year’s “Miss Sloane” — who went out of her way to ask a lawyer (Michael Kostroff) whether her unconventional business was legal. When the Feds say otherwise, she realizes she’s gonna need a far better attorney to spare her doing serious time in prison. And so she settles on Idris Elba, who’s reluctant to take her case for myriad reasons: With her assets seized, she can’t pay him; plus, he’s skeptical that she’s as clean as she claims (frankly, the movie never establishes why she deserves to get off). Still, Elba’s reasons for taking the role are clear: It’s a terrific part with a chewy “drop the goddamn charges” monologue.

The point is, Molly’s a great character, and in the Chastain-Sorkin partnership, she’s performed every bit as forcefully as she’s written. “Molly’s Game” delivers that rare example of a female character who gets the better of some of the country’s richest and most powerful men — and in the film’s most cathartic scene (which immediately follows an entirely unnecessary one, set at the ice-skating rink in New York’s Central Park), she finally gets to confront the ne plus ultra of alpha males, her Svengali-like father, about issues Sorkin has stealthily woven throughout his script.

Remember, he’s a shrink, and in the space of a few minutes, Costner manages to blow her mind, delivering the single most dazzling case of on-screen psychotherapy ever witnessed. As he puts it, “I’m gonna give you the answers.” And he does. And in that moment, as in the brilliant rooftop scene at the end of “Steve Jobs” when the Apple innovator recognizes his daughter as his greatest creation, Sorkin shows his cards, making the movie about something we really care about: human reconciliation, not getting rich, or defending one’s honor. After that, the judge’s verdict hardly matters. Chastain and Sorkin have already won over the audience.

Reviewed at Toronto Film Festival (Special Presentation), Sept. 8, 2017. Running time: 141. MIN.

Production: A STXfilms release of a MG Films, Entertainment One presentation of a Pascal Pictures, the Mark Gordon Co. production. (International sales: Sierra/Affinity, Los Angeles.) Producers: Mark Gordon, Amy Pascal, Matt Jackson. Executive producers: Leopoldo Gout, Stuart Besser.
Crew: Director, writer: Aaron Sorkin, based on the book by Molly Bloom. Camera (color, widescreen): Charlotte Bruus Christensen. Editors: Alan Baumgarten, Elliot Graham, Josh Schaeffer. Music: Daniel Pemberton.
With: Jessica Chastain, Idris Elba, Michael Cera, Kevin Costner.

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Review: Jessica Chastain pulls a winning hand in Aaron Sorkin’s incorrigibly entertaining ‘Molly’s Game’

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In the electrifying “Molly’s Game,” Jessica Chastain almost never raises her voice. She speaks with a calm and clarity that pulls you in, conveying intimacy and authority in the same breath. It’s a shrewd tactic that underscores the cool, guarded temperament of her real-life alter ego, Molly Bloom, a ferociously smart cookie who at 26 found herself running a high-stakes poker empire — a job she landed by safeguarding secrets, instilling trust and avoiding the kind of spotlight that writer-director Aaron Sorkin has now thrown upon her.

Chastain’s measured delivery may also be due to the fact that she has an ungodly amount of dialogue to plow through — did I mention it’s an Aaron Sorkin movie? — and an excess of volume would have almost certainly cost her in speed, coherence and stamina. At 140 minutes, this movie qualifies as something of an endurance test, crammed to the rafters with voice-over narration, rapid-fire banter and some gratifyingly cogent poker commentary.

But as endurance tests go, “Molly’s Game” is also an incorrigible, unapologetic blast — a dazzling rise-and-fall biopic that races forward, backward and sideways, propelled by long, windy gusts of grade-A Sorkinese. Drawn from Bloom’s 2014 memoir as well as episodes and experiences she didn’t include, the movie is a big, brash tale of American striving as well as an identity-blurring, chronology-fudging bit of storytelling business. It’s held in check, and held together, by its clear-eyed admiration of its protagonist and a genuine sense of commitment to her story.

This is no small thing for Sorkin, who, in his long and productive career of writing for film and television, from the testosterone-heavy offices of “Sports Night” to the dizzying techno-prophet narratives of “The Social Network,” “Moneyball” and “Steve Jobs,” has never before given us a proper female lead. But he’s found a superb one in Bloom and a formidable, irresistible heroine in Chastain, and he’s returned the favor by allowing the character to tell her own story from start to finish.

‘Molly’s Game’ is an incorrigible, unapologetic blast — a dazzling rise-and-fall biopic...propelled by long, windy gusts of grad-A Sorkinese.

If incessant voice-over is inherently uncinematic, then “Molly’s Game” might be the exception that proves the rule. It may not have the rich visual flourishes that a David Fincher or a Danny Boyle might have brought to the table, but Sorkin, in a solid directing debut, knows instinctively how to shuffle images, dialogue and music together for maximum narrative drive.

A terrific opening sequence finds Molly narrating a painful flashback to her days as a world-class skier, specifically the painful accident that dashed her Olympic dreams. It’s a sharp, teasing setup for a tale of even higher stakes and steeper falls from grace, set in motion by an early scene of Molly being arrested by the FBI for her alleged involvement in an illegal gambling racket.

Flash back a few years to around 2003, when Molly puts her law-school plans on hold, leaves her Colorado hometown and moves to Los Angeles. There, she begins working as a cocktail waitress and then an assistant to a Hollywood insider, Dean Keith (Jeremy Strong, nice and sleazy), who soon has Molly running his weekly poker night out of the Cobra Club (a stand-in for the notorious Viper Room), complete with $10,000 buy-ins from a pool of hand-picked, high-profile names.

The details of how she hijacks the operation and gives it a stylish upgrade — a suite at the Four Seasons, multiple games per week, millions of dollars on the table — make “Molly’s Game” the most absorbing poker movie in many a moon, told with breathtaking dexterity and an invaluable assist from a crowded supporting cast. The actors who plant themselves at Molly’s table include Michael Cera (a vicious stand-in for Tobey Maguire), Brian d’Arcy James, Chris O’Dowd and Bill Camp, the last especially good as a seasoned player who bottoms out spectacularly in one of the movie’s many cautionary anecdotes.

Even before a few Russian mobsters get in on the action, taking this loaded but legal enterprise in a more sordid direction, Molly has no shortage of greedy, overconfident men to cajole, spar with, counsel and occasionally turn the tables on. But for the most part, she remains on the sidelines, an alluring, unattainable enigma, and Chastain underplays beautifully, with a level of nuance that eclipses even her earlier take-no-prisoners performances in films like “Miss Sloane” and “Zero Dark Thirty.”

Chastain draws us so deeply into Molly’s lightning-speed thought processes that you can almost see her synapses firing, making “Molly’s Game” not just a biographical portrait but a genuine thriller of the mind. The thrill comes from watching Molly figure everything out: She knows little about poker or high-stakes gambling when she’s first getting started, but she has an appetite for research, an ease with technology and a knack for calculating an idea’s untapped potential.

If the movie emerges as a celebration of its heroine’s wits, it is also, ultimately, a defense of her scruples — something it achieves through a deft combination of “Social Network” structural gimmickry and “Steve Jobs” sentimental back story. For the movie’s purposes, the two most important men in Molly’s life are her reluctant attorney, Charlie Jaffy (a superb Idris Elba), who both loathes and admires her refusal to sell out her client list for a possible reduced sentence, and her tough, demanding, emotionally distant father (Kevin Costner), who materializes, in key flashbacks, to teach and torment his daughter anew.

The most questionable scene involves the fastidious unpacking of Molly’s daddy issues, sending Sorkin’s penchant for overexplanation into overdrive and potentially chipping away at the movie’s feminist bona fides. At the risk of mansplaining myself, I’m not sure that it does. Molly isn’t reduced, simplified or sentimentalized by her reckonings with the past, and the victory she wrests from the closing scenes is nothing if not fully earned. She’s a winner in a movie that proves worthy of her.

------------

‘Molly’s Game’

Rating: R, for language, drug content and some violence

Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes

Playing: In general release

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Molly's Game Review

First you get the poker, then you get the power, then you get indicted..

Molly’s Game doesn’t announce Aaron Sorkin as the next great filmmaker, but he’s a good one. It’s a competently filmed production with some fine performances, but it lacks the focus and showpersonship that would be necessary to make it feel like more.

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Molly's game, common sense media reviewers.

Talky, mature drama with powerful, imperfect female lead.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Hard work pays off, but in illegal ways. Essential

Molly is a very strong female character; she takes

A man briefly but brutally beats a woman, kicking

Flirting, propositioning (though nothing graphic e

Many uses of "f--k" or "f--king," plus "motherf---

Grey Goose, Skyy vodkas mentioned.

Main character eventually becomes a regular drug u

Positive Messages

Hard work pays off, but in illegal ways. Essentially, viewers are asked to absolve/root for a character who plunges into all kinds of illicit activities, with money and power as the main goal. Whether she deserves it will be up to each audience member.

Positive Role Models

Molly is a very strong female character; she takes control of a situation normally run by men and succeeds phenomenally. But she uses her intelligence and power to do something quasi-illegal, largely for monetary gain. She's somewhat redeemed in the end, but the complexities of her character make her difficult to consider as a role model. Charlie, on the other hand, is clearly an upstanding, decent man who cares about justice.

Violence & Scariness

A man briefly but brutally beats a woman, kicking her and slamming her against a wall. She has a bloody face and other wounds as a result. Ski crash with injury. Quick shot of spinal surgery.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Flirting, propositioning (though nothing graphic ever shown), discussion of people sleeping with others. Some tight/revealing outfits. Molly definitely uses her attractiveness as one of the tools in her arsenal, but she's in control almost all of the time.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Many uses of "f--k" or "f--king," plus "motherf---ing," "s--t," "bulls---," "ass," "a--hole," "hell," "goddamn," "d--k," "moron," "Jesus Christ" as an exclamation.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Drinking, drugs & smoking.

Main character eventually becomes a regular drug user and addict (Adderall, Xanax, cocaine, alcohol, etc.). Frequent social drinking, sometimes to excess. Smoking.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Molly's Game is a fact-based drama about Molly Bloom (based on her own book), whose once-promising Olympic skiing career was derailed by injury, after which she ran a high-stakes underground poker game, only to be undone by Russian gangsters. Expect lots of strong language, with uses of "f--k," "s--t" (in various permutations), and many other words. The main character is brutally beaten up in one scene; she's kicked and slammed against a wall, with bloody injuries shown. Her skiing accident is also shown, as are brief shots of spinal surgery. Bloom becomes a drug addict, abusing Adderall, Xanax, cocaine, alcohol, and more. Social drinking and smoking also are shown. Marking Aaron Sorkin 's directorial debut, the film is not a total success, but it's energetic and entertaining, with a strong lead performance by Jessica Chastain . To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Based on 6 parent reviews

What's the Story?

In MOLLY'S GAME, Molly Bloom ( Jessica Chastain ) tries to hire lawyer Charlie Jaffey ( Idris Elba ) to defend her against a federal lawsuit. To convince him to take her on, she tells him her story: Raised by a strict psychologist ( Kevin Costner ), Molly is once a very promising Olympic skier. But then her career is derailed by a freak accident. So she moves to L.A. and gets a job working for a sleazy promoter, eventually helping him run high-stakes backroom poker games -- the kind that attract movie stars like "Player X" ( Michael Cera ). Molly soon learns how the games work, taking home huge tips. When her boss threatens to take away her salary, she steals his contact list and starts her own game. Things fall apart when Russian mobsters become involved in the game and Molly's drug use spins out of control. She's temporarily saved by the option to write a book about her experiences, but now she needs even bigger help. Will Charlie take the case?

Is It Any Good?

In the directorial debut from mile-a-minute screenwriter Aaron Sorkin , he opts to get out of his own way and stick to the script; the result isn't perfect, but it's energetic and entertaining. Chastain is a strong reason for the movie's effectiveness, playing a powerful woman who's unafraid to stand up to the men around her. She attacks Sorkin's dialogue with a frenzy and owns it. Molly's Game jumps around in time, with lots of narration and flashbacks, even continuing from where the nonfiction book by the real Molly Bloom left off. It goes on at a great rate for 140 whole minutes and never seems to flag.

But along the way, it's possible to question whether Molly deserves this kind of movie. After all, she did do the things she's accused of doing, even if she claims she didn't know the Russians had become involved. Why should we care? Even her lawyer is reluctant to take her case, and he has every reason in the world to feel that way. But, ultimately, this is a movie about poker, and Sorkin deals out scenes like a pro, zippily flinging cards and holding the important ones until he really needs them. His winning hand is the realization that this has been a father-daughter story all along, and that's the thing that matters.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how Molly's Game depicts drinking and drug use/abuse . Does it look glamorous? Are there consequences for abusing drugs and alcohol? Why does that matter ?

Is Molly a role model ? Did you root for her? If so, why? Are there lessons to be learned from her story? Do you think things might have gone differently if she weren't a woman?

What's so appealing about high-stakes gambling? What's dangerous?

How is the movie's central father-daughter relationship depicted? How does it compare with your own, real-life relationships?

How does the movie compare with others that Sorkin has written ( The Social Network , Moneyball , A Few Good Men , etc.)?

Movie Details

In theaters : December 25, 2017
On DVD or streaming : April 10, 2018
Cast : Jessica Chastain , Idris Elba , Kevin Costner
Director : Aaron Sorkin
Inclusion Information : Female actors, Black actors
Studio : STX Entertainment
Genre : Drama
Run time : 140 minutes
MPAA rating : R
MPAA explanation : language, drug content and some violence
Last updated : April 19, 2024

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DVD & Streaming

Molly’s Game

Content caution.

In Theaters

January 5, 2018
Jessica Chastain as Molly Bloom; Idris Elba as Charlie Jaffey; Kevin Costner as Larry Bloom; Michael Cera as Player X; Jeremy Strong as Dean Keith; Chris O'Dowd as Douglas Downey; J.C. MacKenzie as Harrison Wellstone; Brian d'Arcy James as Brad; Bill Camp as Harlan Eustice; Graham Greene as Judge Foxman

Home Release Date

April 10, 2018
Aaron Sorkin

Distributor

Movie review.

Pick a card, any card.

Only 52 to choose from, you know. They’re shuffled well, and no one’s marking them, so you never know what you might draw. A three? Jack? Ace? Who knows? Every card game is a game of chance, when you get right to it. It doesn’t matter if you’re playing solitaire or crazy 8s or Texas hold ’em. Your fate turns on the turn of a card.

Then again, the phrase if you play your cards right became a cliché for a reason.

Molly Bloom began with a solid hand. Her father pushed Molly hard in everything she did—pushed her, in fact, almost into the Olympics as a freestyle skier. She grew up in a relatively stable home with no obvious disadvantages. She has a couple of aces in her hand, too: her obvious smarts and her unflagging drive. Success is hers for sure.

Then Molly draws her next card: a scary fall during the Olympic tryouts—one that could’ve easily snapped her surgically repaired spine. She survives. She recovers. But her Olympic dreams vanish.

She gets to choose her next card: Law school? Not just yet. “I wanted to be young for a while in warm weather,” she says. So she goes to Los Angeles and takes a job as a waitress at a booming night club, encouraging twice-loaded patrons to spend freely. She grabs another gig as an office assistant. Both are just meant to pay the bills and bide her time before she settles into a real career.

Molly draws a wildcard next: Dean Keith. He sees her charisma, her talent, her drive and offers her a job as his personal assistant. And even though Dean’s a lousy boss and a terrible person, he does introduce Molly into a little business wrinkle of his: a high-stakes poker game he runs out of L.A.’s Viper Lounge, one attended by a legion of deep-pocketed businessmen, sports figures and celebs. Could she help him run the game, Dean asks?

Molly arrives in her best dress—she bought it for $88 at J.C. Penney—and collects $10,000 from every poker player who walks through the doors. Dean asks the players to tip her at the end of the night and, just like that, she’s $3,000 richer. (Spend it on a new dress, Dean suggests.)

So it goes for weeks and months.

It wouldn’t last, of course. It couldn’t. Molly was paid to be charmingly efficient, but Dean’s butter-soft ego wouldn’t allow Molly to be too charming, too efficient. And one day, he makes the call that Molly always knew he’d make.

“You’re unimportant,” he spits. “You’re fired.”

A tough card, to be sure, but the game’s not over. Molly still has a face card to play. She has numbers for all of Dean’s regular gamblers in her phone. She sends one simple text to them all: There’s a new game in town. Buy in? $50,000.

Dean tried to cut Molly out. Molly cuts him out instead. She’s running the show: She has all the cards, all the chips, all the players. It’s Molly’s game now.

Or so it would seem. But sometimes, early successes can lead to big failures as the game wears on. What seems like a winning hand could end up losing the pot.

Positive Elements

Let’s not pretend Molly is a paragon of moral rectitude. But in the murky world she inhabits, she had standards. Her customers couldn’t buy the game, and they couldn’t buy her. Her parlors were places where rules still stood, and her well-heeled players—gamblers who outside those confines could buy most anything—found that refreshing.

She gave herself a rule, too: Never deal and tell. When she tries to sell a book about her career, publishers tell her that she could garner a huge advance if she names names, identifying the moves and shakers she catered to. She refuses and accepts a much lower advance. And she stays true to that ideal, for better or worse, ’til the end.

Molly also tries to help some of her players. When a gambler spirals out of control, she encourages him to go home. When someone racks up a debt he can’t pay, she sits him down and tells him that he needs to talk to his wife and confess everything. “Tell her what happened,” she says. “I’m going to help you. Get you to a [Gambler’s Anonymous] meeting. Figure out what to do about the money.” She gently tells one rich-but-inept gambler that perhaps this isn’t his game.

While Molly and her father have a very difficult relationship, Molly eventually appreciates his “encouragement.” “You know how many girls at the Olympics have demanding fathers?” she rhetorically asks her lawyer, Charlie. “All of them?” he says. Her dad, Larry, loves her, too. “I’m your father,” he says. “Trying to comprehend how much I love you would be like trying to visualize the size of the universe.”

Spiritual Elements

We hear references to The Crucible , Arthur Miller’s play about the Salem witch trials, which Charlie makes his daughter read. Molly tells the girl that no accused witches were ever burned at the stake in Salem: They were hanged or drowned or crushed instead.

Molly compares herself to Circe, the goddess in Homer’s Odyssey who lures men to her island only to turn them into pigs. We hear an offhand mention of “Christmas miracles.” When something unexpectedly positive happens, Molly says, “Sometimes God happens fast.” In an effort to attract Russian gamblers, Molly presents herself (perhaps half-jokingly) as a “Russian Jew.”

Sexual Content

“I never traded sex for money,” Molly tells Federal prosecutors. “Still not sure if [the conversation is on] the record, but if there is, I want to make certain that was in it.”

She’s telling the truth, though she does flirt with a few customers. She and others often wear glamorous gowns that showcase curves and cleavage; in New York she hires a bevy of alluring women described as former Playboy Playmates to work the gambling parlor with her.

Molly takes a shower in which we see her back. In flashback, a 14-year-old Molly says that she believes that marriage is a “trap.” As an adult, though, she expresses a longing to settle down and have kids. We hear intimations of unfaithfulness among Molly’s regular gamblers.

There’s a reference to a woman whom Larry says “doesn’t like men.” Molly corrects him: “She doesn’t like d–ks, Dad. There’s a difference.”

[ Spoiler Warning ] Molly’s father was unfaithful to his wife throughout their marriage. Molly’s known since she was just five, when (we’re told) she saw Larry in a car with another woman but didn’t comprehend what she saw. But she knew, Larry insists. “I knew you knew.” And some of his strict, unloving attitude toward her was “how I reacted to the shame.”

Violent Content

As a kid, Molly suffers a back ailment. We see the aftermath of the surgery to correct the condition—lots of bloody incision marks and stitches around her spine—and we learn that the doctors told her that she should probably not ski anymore. But she does. Years later, during the Olympic trials, she has a serious accident: One of her skis somehow uncouples right before a twisting flip and she lands hard. We see her body bounce and tumble along the ground and her bloodied face afterward.

When the Mob approaches Molly to “partner” with her operation and provide muscle to collect debts, Molly refuses. She’s later attacked in her apartment building: She’s punched in the face, kicked and slammed into the wall until she’s bloodied and bruised. Before the Mafia thug leaves, he forces her to open her mouth and sticks the muzzle of a gun in it. The implied threat is clear: If she doesn’t agree to work with the Mob, she’ll be killed. Later, Molly leaves red bloodstains on her white apartment walls and, when she takes a shower, blood runs copiously down her spine. FBI agents also point guns at Molly during an arrest.

Crude or Profane Language

Nearly 30 uses of the f-word and another dozen or so of the s-word. We also hear “a–,” “b–ch,” “h—” and “n-gger.” Crass words for various anatomical parts are sometimes lobbed. God’s name is misused four times, once with “d–n.”

Drug and Alcohol Content

Gambling and mind-altering substances often go hand in hand here. Molly says that in her early days, she was drug-free and made good decisions. But as her games grew more popular and she added more poker nights to her schedule, she started taking drugs to stay awake and alert—everything from the prescription drug Adderall to cocaine. Then she’d take something else to bring her back down. Toward the end of her run she admits, “I was addicted to drugs—anything that could keep me up for a few days and knock me out for a few hours.” When she hears that police are raiding her games, she hurriedly flushes bags of white powder down the toilet. She admits that she’s an alcoholic, too.

Molly cleans herself up, though. And by the time she meets and hires Charlie, she’s been alcohol- and drug-free for a couple of years.

Plenty of folks drink heavily while playing poker. One regular seems perpetually drunk, at one point proposing marriage to Molly in a wobble-headed slur. People smoke while playing poker. Scenes in nightclubs are soaked with alcoholic beverages and besotted with drunken revelers. Lawyers prosecuting Molly’s case believe she’s knee-deep with the Russian Mob.

We hear a reference to the drug MDMA, sometimes called by the street name Molly.

Other Negative Elements

Obviously, gambling is at the very core of Molly’s Game : We hear so much about poker that by the time the movie’s over, some gambling novices may feel like they have enough knowledge to play a few hands in Vegas.

Most of the time, Molly’s games are strictly legit: Neither New York nor L.A., where Molly operates, prohibit the sort of private games that Molly sponsors. As long as she was paid in tips—not “taking a rake,” or skimming money off the top of the pot—everything is considered legal. That said, she does eventually start taking a rake, leaving her vulnerable to criminal prosecution.

Molly’s games often attract unsavory characters, including the head of a Ponzi scheme (who bilked several gamblers out of millions) and several folks who wind up being connected to the Russian mob. One gambler admits that for him, the thrill isn’t in the win. It’s in “destroying lives.” We see someone try to sneak non-game chips into a game.

When explaining the inner drive that led her to become the unlikely impresario of a multi-million-dollar gambling operation, Molly has a simple explanation: “I was raised to be a champion. My goal was to win. At what and against whom? Those were just details.”

But the devil’s in the details, as they say, and there are plenty of little devils here. Yes, Molly has some strong principles. But she stands upon them in an already morally comprised netherworld. And even as she attempts to improve that netherworld in some small ways, she still preys upon the sins and weaknesses of her clients, all while developing a few of her own. Molly’s self-comparison to Circe from Grecian myth is apt: Like that Greek goddess, she lured her customers into what seemed to be a paradise and watched them turn to swine—swine who drink and smoke and leer until the sun rises and they find themselves perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars poorer.

This is not to say that this film is without merit. It’s riveting, well-written and superlatively performed. It even has a moral of sorts, as well as a few surprisingly heart-warming moments. But in the end, Molly’s Game may leave viewers feeling like they’re holding a bust hand: cards that look promising, but that add up to nothing.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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Molly’s Game Review

29 Dec 2017

Molly’s Game

Poker is a game of skill rather than chance, but despite the fact that livelihoods and lives can hang on the turn of a card, it has given us no end of heavy-handed and uninvolving films, without even the visual panache of sliding into home base to lift the storytelling. Aaron Sorkin’s based-in-fact directorial debut cleverly sidesteps this by focusing on the games runner not the game, and it’s when keeping his eye off the cards that he best captures the impossible tension of play.

We meet Jessica Chastain’s Molly Bloom aged 20 as she enters the US team’s Winter Olympic trials. Disaster follows, she’s injured, and the devastated athlete instead heads to LA. While working as PA to a Hollywood sleazebag, she starts to run his weekly celebrity card game, and soon reinvents herself as a powerful and untouchable poker hostess. She doesn’t gamble, doesn’t get paid for her services, and lives off the extravagant tips of her high-rolling clients. It’s enough to keep her in Balmain and Louboutin, but there’s an ultimately devastating power differential.

That’s why we flash-forward to an older Molly, who’s been arrested and charged with involvement with the Russian Mafia and is desperately seeking help from Idris Elba’s wary lawyer, Charlie Jaffey. Bloom’s challenge is convincing him to take her case, never mind overcoming the government’s campaign to put her in prison. The question is what cards Molly is willing to show to secure her release. Will she dish the dirt or stay silent and suffer the consequences?

Chastain brings dramatic weight and nuance to a woman the tabloids reduced to a party-girl stereotype.

From The West Wing to The Social Network , Sorkin has been deservedly criticised for his female characters, but Chastain is great as the determined, beleaguered Bloom and brings dramatic weight and nuance to a woman the tabloids reduced to a party-girl stereotype.

But the showiest performance here is Sorkin’s, in the first time that the screenwriter-turned-director has been given entirely free rein. Bloom’s narration is delivered in fluent ‘Sorkinese’, where Chastain and Elba lecture each other on one another’s backstories as a means of turning exposition into know-it-all character trait. The effect is exciting and effective, but it’s awfully familiar.

The film’s biggest challenge is going to be context. In a post-Weinstein era, its moral feels murky. Molly’s act of defiance seems less laudable now, the behaviour of some of the men she deals with more worrying than she seems to think. While Sorkin makes it clear who’s deserving of praise or disgust, you sense audiences will fundamentally reject his conclusions.

Sorkin may condemn a world where women like Molly are mistreated by powerful men, but he doesn’t propose any revolution. As such, this feels like a small story, well told, but stopping short of risking anything high stakes.

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Molly's game review: chastain & sorkin deal a winning hand.

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Clint Eastwood's Most Forgotten Western Is Also His Funniest

This is not the hellboy movie i wanted, kevin costner's yellowstone replacement chances look dead after $100 million gamble backfires, molly's game is an entertaining look at a fascinating true story, powered by an excellent script and captivating performances..

Famous for penning screenplays to acclaimed dramas such as A Few Good Men and The Social Network , Molly's Game marks the first time Oscar-winning scribe Aaron Sorkin stepped behind the camera to helm a feature film. Over the course of his illustrious career, he has developed a distinct style that's been memorably translated by some of the industry's top filmmakers, but Sorkin felt he had to tackle this story himself. Directorial debuts are always a tricky proposition, but armed with a fascinating narrative and a stellar cast, the hope was Sorkin would be able to show his skillset goes well beyond putting words to page, and that's certainly the case. Molly's Game is an entertaining look at an intriguing true story, powered by an excellent script and captivating performances.

Competitive skier Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain) sees her Olympic hopes and sports career end when she suffers a gruesome injury, forcing her to forge a new path in life. Putting off law school, Molly moves to Los Angeles and lands an office assistant job working for Dean Keith (Jeremy Strong). Molly is soon tasked with organizing high-stakes poker games Dean runs for Hollywood's elite, which greatly improves her financial standing. When things fall apart with Dean, Molly takes matters into her own hands and puts together her own game for wealthy clients.

The business venture proves to be quite successful for Molly, but things come screeching to a halt when the FBI raids her home as part of an investigation into Russian mob activities. Left without any of the money she made and desperate to protect her name, Molly turns to the legal counsel of Charlie Jaffey (Idris Elba) to weigh her options - either cooperate with authorities and give up all the information she has on her poker players or go to prison.

Sorkin delivers another screenplay loaded with his trademark rapid-fire dialogue that packs a punch. A majority of the film's runtime consists simply of people talking to each other about their situations, and there's great joy to be had in hearing the veteran writer's words bring life to this tale. Every part from the principal players to smallest supporting roles get the proper amount of shading so that no character feels inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. There are numerous lines that pop out and stick with the viewer long after the credits have rolled, making Sorkin's latest work worthy of the awards attention it's receiving. Sorkin also deserves credit for distilling the somewhat complicated nature of poker by presenting that information in a way that's easily accessible. He doesn't harp on the intricacies of the game, giving the audience the broad strokes they need to understand Molly's story.

Michael Cera plays Player X in Molly's Game

That a Sorkin script is exemplary is nothing new. What is a pleasant surprise is the adeptness he shows as a director. Molly's Game runs close to 2.5 hours and never feels its length, a testament to Sorkin's grasp of storytelling and pace. The film briskly moves along, keeping viewers engaged throughout the narrative's various twists and turns. The approach Sorkin takes is very reminiscent of Martin Scorsese (complete with voice-over), but never comes across as cheap imitation. He's able to firmly establish his own voice with this movie, showing that he's learned well from the master craftsmen he's collaborated with in the past. This year has seen numerous stellar directorial debuts, and Molly's Game is no exception. Not all of the directorial choices are perfectly seamless, but what Sorkin accomplishes is very impressive.

Sorkin deserves a lion's share of the credit for how the film turned out, but there's no denying this is Jessica Chastain's show. The Oscar-nominee gives a typical powerhouse performance, painting Bloom as a dynamic and interesting character with a plethora of discernible strengths and flaws. What's asked of Chastain (handling Sorkin's snappy dialogue while carrying the entire movie on her shoulders) is no easy task, and she's definitely game for it. This is undoubtedly one of the best turns of her career to date, as she relishes in the material with her magnetic screen presence and natural talent. Much like the script, Chastain has more than earned the numerous accolades she's received on the awards circuit, and she could be in line for another Academy Award nod here.

Kevin Costner and Jessica Chastain in Molly's Game

Not to be outdone, the cast around Chastain is terrific as well. Of the supporting roles, Elba has the meatiest one as a well-intentioned lawyer trying to help Molly find what's best for her. Chastain and Elba play off each other nicely, developing a fantastic chemistry that makes all of their exchanges crackle with energy. After an arguably disappointing stretch for the actor the past few months, it's great to see Elba close the year on a high note, as he gets several moments to shine and display his abilities. Kevin Costner plays Molly's demanding father Larry, and what could have been a two-dimensional stereotype evolves into something much better, as Larry and Molly have an emotional through-line that pays off in a very rewarding way towards the end. Other actors, like Michael Cera, Jeremy Strong, and Chris O'Dowd, have smaller roles, but all leave an impression.

Molly's Game may not be getting as much Oscar buzz as other films this season, but cinephiles should certainly check it out now that it's playing in theaters nationwide. The film announces Sorkin's arrival as a director (not just a screenwriter) to watch, and if this is any indication, he'll only improve as he gains more experience in that capacity. It helps the filmmaker is working with such a talented ensemble, and in the early days of January (usually the doldrums for new releases), there aren't many films that can top Chastain and Elba at the top of their games reciting a Sorkin screenplay. For viewers crossing titles off their awards "to-watch" lists, this is one they shouldn't miss.

Molly's Game is now playing in U.S. theaters. It runs 140 minutes and is rated R for language, drug content, and some violence.

Let us know what you thought of the film in the comments!

Molly's Game

With a screenplay and direction from Aaron Sorkin, 2017's Molly's Game is a Crime, Drama, and Biography film starring Jessica Chastain, Kevin Costner, and Idris Elba. The film follows a woman who's running an underground Poker empire that caters to the rich and famous as it's exposed by the FBI.

Key Release Dates

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4 star movies

Consequence

Film Review: Molly’s Game

Aaron Sorkin's directorial debut sharply captures the good and bad sides of luck

Directed by

Aaron Sorkin
Jessica Chastain
Kevin Costner

Release Year

The following review was originally published as part of our coverage of the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival .

Molly’s Game , the directorial debut from lauded screenwriter Aaron Sorkin , begins with a giddy voiceover monologue about failure in sports, on both the general concept and the one specifically suffered by American downhill skier and Olympic hopeful Molly Bloom ( Jessica Chastain ) after an errant frozen stick on the race course leads to a career-ending injury. This wordy burst of overbearing father ( Kevin Costner )-ridden backstory, statistics, downhill skiing 101, and pop philosophy that’s packed almost as tightly with directorial flourishes as it is with verbiage, serves as an effective litmus test for the viewer.

If you love watching and listening to a particularly game Chastain expertly navigate Sorkin’s trademark bursts of dialogue as nimbly as her pre-injury Molly navigates moguls, you’re in for a treat, as the pair tackle the true-crime story of what happens next. If you find it a tad cloying, overbearing, or simply too Sorkin-esque for your personal tastes, it’s really not going to get any better for you from there. But it’s also an efficient way to establish Molly’s thoroughly efficient character. The idea of showing instead of telling isn’t necessary, or even particularly possible. Not when you’re dealing with a sharp, smart, and hyper-verbal competitive athlete-turned-leader of the most exclusive underground poker rings in the world, who constantly assesses herself and everything in her sphere and then discusses it all at great length.

Buried somewhere in all of this, Molly briefly touches on the importance of timing. She’s specifically talking about the precision with which you have to hit each mogul and angle while racing downhill, but it’s equally applicable to the film itself as a whole. This particular work is hitting at what could be the perfect time for a film of this nature in our current cultural and political climate. Provided that we survive these things, Molly’s Game could very well occupy a space in cinematic history that goes beyond its merits as a film.

This is not to say that it has none. Based on Bloom’s 2014 memoir, Molly’s Game: From Hollywood’s Elite to Wall Street’s Billionaire Boys Club, My High-Stakes Adventure in the World of Underground Poker (even when it comes to titles, Molly is clearly not a believer in brevity), the film is a clever, fast, and fun romp through the underground poker world, the lives of the celebrities and other high-powered men who participate, and the moral code of the woman who runs it all. Chastain is at the top of her form as Molly, dominant and driven, and multiple steps ahead of everyone else in the room until a collection of well-armed FBI agents show up at her door in the middle of the night.

Her co-stars do an admirable job of keeping up, particularly Idris Elba as her lawyer who takes what could be a thankless sidekick role – if his job in the story is to represent her in a court of law, his function in the context of the film is essentially to represent her in the court of the viewer’s opinion – and makes it his own. Michael Cera serves as an impressively stealth slimeball as Player X, the movie star who becomes one of Molly’s early allies in the game, and Chris O’Dowd is disproportionately amusing as another key player later on. Sorkin is not immune to the missteps of a first-time director, but he’s not without his gifts behind the camera, either. (It is amusing to note, though, that the biggest praise coming out of the early reviews for Molly’s Game at TIFF was that his directorial style somehow kept his worst impulses as a screenwriter in line.)

What makes this thoroughly capable crime film truly intriguing, though, are its subtle changes in theme from much of Sorkin’s past work and most of American cinema’s flashier, higher-profile dramas. While Molly is an extremely capable woman who has enjoyed a great deal of success in her life, her cinematic story is framed through her failures. It begins with her literal fall from Olympic grace, and then quickly cuts to her being arrested as her attempt at a second act in life comes crashing down. The notion of chance and luck versus hard work and personal culpability is also introduced in these moments, and recurs throughout the film. Poker, as Molly proudly argues, is a game of skill, not a game of chance, and it’s clear that throughout most of her life, she has seen her existence in a similar fashion – and herself as both a master player and the architect of her own demise. But she’s also someone whose biggest goal in life was thwarted by a fluke.

Watching Molly try to negotiate all of these concepts as she fights for her life and her integrity in court is interesting, but watching all of this happen in a film of this nature and stature in the United States at this point in the country’s history is fascinating – and also quite refreshing. While there have been many American artists who have brilliantly criticized and analyzed their country over its lifespan – Sorkin himself famously ripped the concept of America a new one in the early moments of The Newsroom – there’s always been a certain amount of American mythology that has crept into the nation’s most sweeping cinematic stories. Heroes are self-made. Chance has nothing to do with it. Success is the inevitable result.

And, for most of the country’s lifespan, the rest of the world has either bought into this kind of art, or at least tolerated it well enough. Americans had the budget and bluster for it, so why not let them have their self-indulgent fun? At a time when the failures and deeply seated issues with the U.S. as both a concept and a functioning society are impossible to ignore or explain away, the rest of us aren’t really here for those fairy tales any longer. So there’s something genuinely exciting about seeing one of the nation’s greatest exports – the flashy, swaggering rags-to-riches story – bring a touch of nuance and introspection to this well-trod gospel.

Molly’s Game is a successful crime drama, but it’s also a film that acknowledges the presence of both good and bad luck in the pursuit of excellence. Most importantly, it allows failure to exist as a living and breathing entity, rather than a tragic ending or a fate simply suffered by the morally impure. And that is what you might call exceptional.

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Film Review: Molly's Game

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Molly's Game

Molly's Game hits cinemas on New Year's Day

Aaron Sorkin’s directorial debut delivers more flushes than flops, but the mind-boggling true story was always going to draw the right cards.

Molly’s Game tells the real-life story of Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain), an almost Olympic skier, who at the age of 26, brokered a highly exclusive underground poker game for the rich and famous. Matt Damon, Tobey Maguire, Leonardo DiCaprio and Ben Affleck are all on record as being regulars at the table.

After almost a decade of hosting the illegal games and earning a staggering €3 million a year just in tips alone, Molly's 'Poker Princess' bubble was burst by the FBI after Russian mob members and money-launderers were connected with her high-rolling circle.

The movie has all of the dazzle and pizzazz of Sorkin’s best screenwriting work ( The Social Network , Steve Jobs , Moneyball) , with the unquenchable thirst of greed rolling the dice throughout.

Chastain goes all in with her unvarnished performance playing a truly flawed character with quiet vulnerability. She is stripped bare emotionally and brings the right blend of brokenness and calculation to the role - she’s smart, funny, sassy, and well on her way to Oscar jackpot.

Idris Elba basks in the ridiculousness of his surroundings as Molly's New York lawyer Charlie Jaffey and makes light work of her ethical dilemmas.

The movie is at its most interesting when it delves into Molly’s past and explores her daddy issues with her hard-driving psychologist father (Kevin Costner), but the script struggles to remove its poker face and deals a weak hand when it comes to character development.

The shuffle between the superficial world of the high-rolling pool sharks and Molly’s moral regeneration fold-in midway leaving too many high-stake questions at the table. What did she do with all of the money? Why did she forgive her father so easily after years of ignoring him?

The movie's biggest cheat is that it tries to be smart throughout but ends up becoming a safe bet. It's difficult to buy in to the story fully when some of the juiciest details are left out and the characters are all fictional.

In Molly's memoir she refers to one game where Tobey Maguire asked her to bark 'like a seal' for a tip, while recalling another time when spectators Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen were responsible for bringing in a billionaire to her table. Bar the occasional nod to drugs and scantily clad waitresses, the film fails to detail what really went on behind closed doors at these exclusive games.

While the ending seems hurried and underwhelming, Molly’s Game is a riotously entertaining and timely outing. Worth a gamble over the holiday season.

Laura Delaney

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REVIEW: “Molly’s Game”

Jessica Chastain already had one knockout 2017 performance under her belt with the World War 2 drama “The Zookeeper’s Wife”. Now you can make it two with her latest film, the biographical crime drama “Molly’s Game”. It’s an adaptation of the 2014 memoir of Molly Bloom, once an Olympic hopeful in freestyle skiing but later the runner of exclusive underground poker games.

Chastain plays Molly Bloom and is given an incredibly meaty role by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin. This also marks Sorkin’s feature film directorial debut. Much like his Oscar-winning script for “The Social Network”, “Molly’s Game” slickly weaves together a current day legal drama with flashbacks that tell of Molly’s rise and decade-long run as the “poker princess” which eventually leads to her arrest by the FBI.

Sorkin’s signature dense, fast-paced dialogue zips us through the backstory with the help of Molly’s narration. It comes in spurts and covers a lot of ground – her time at home with her hard-nosed father/coach (another fine supporting turn by Kevin Costner), her move to Los Angeles after a horrible skiing accident, and her high-stakes poker games that start in LA and end in New York.

Throughout these flashbacks we meet an interesting lot of characters. Take Michael Cera who plays a movie star simply known as Player X. In Molly’s memoir she named several A-listers who frequented her games – movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Ben Affleck, rapper Nelly, and baseball star Alex Rodriguez to name a few. Many believe Cera’s smarmy Player X is an amalgam of these big named celebrities who helped draw billionaires to Molly’s games. But it seems Player X represents one particular movie star who the book paints as particularly reprehensible – Tobey Maquire.

The dialogue also shines in the current day scenes with Molly and her lawyer Charlie Jaffey. He’s played by Idris Elba, so perfect in tone and intensity. Delivering Sorkin’s words can’t be easy. It demands a quick tongue and even quicker wit. Elba’s delivery is smooth as silk and he shares a well tuned chemistry with Chastain. At times there is a fierce energy between the two but there are also quieter moments which offer a unexpected amount of warmth and levity.

All of it is kept in sync through Sorkin’s impressive direction. He deftly manages his mile-a-minute language and structural hopscotch while giving his performers plenty of space to work. The film also packs a surprising visual punch that matches the spirit and vigor of the dialogue. It’s nothing eye-popping but it’s as sharp and snappy as it’s lead character. And most importantly Sorkin keeps himself out of the way, trusting his material and his actors.

Aaron Sorkin has shown a fascination in self-made success stories as evident by his last four movies. “The Social Network”, “Moneyball”, “Steve Jobs”, and now “Molly’s Game” all tell of individuals who bucked systems and against all probability propelled themselves to success. “Molly’s Game” may be the best of the bunch. It’s one part invigorating character study and one part stunning expose. It features a trifecta of top-notch performances from Elba, Costner, and especially Chastain. It does feel long at 140 minutes yet it’s never dull nor does it run out of gas. Sorkin has too much to say to ever allow that to happen.

VERDICT – 4.5 STARS

Kevin Costner’s Best Performance in Years Wasn’t in a Western

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The Big Picture

Kevin Costner's career resurgence in recent years has led to projects like Yellowstone and Molly's Game .
Molly's Game , directed by Aaron Sorkin, relies on snappy dialogue and features Costner as Molly's father, Larry.
Costner's powerful performance adds emotional nuance and chemistry with Jessica Chastain, making Molly's Game more impactful.

It’s been quite an interesting few years for Kevin Costner . While he was arguably one of the most significant movie stars of his generation throughout the late 20th century, Costner’s star power began to diminish in the subsequent decade due to a series of critical and financial disappointments. It turned out a change of medium was all that Costner needed to once again find his audience. After The History Channel’s ambitious miniseries Hatfields & McCoys became a surprising breakout hit in 2012, Costner was later cast in Yellowstone , a series that would redefine both his career and the neo-Western genre. While Yellowstone became Costner's most defining project in the later half of his career, Costner briefly returned to cinema to deliver an extraordinary supporting performance in the Academy Award-nominated biopic Molly’s Game.

Molly’s Game served as the directorial debut of the award-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin , whose impressive resume includes such classics as A Few Good Men, The American President, The Social Network, and Moneyball . While Sorkin certainly showed some flourish of style within his debut feature, Molly’s Game is largely reliant on the snappy, clever dialogue that Sorkin came to popularize during his work on The West Wing . Molly's Game is a relentlessly entertaining depiction of a wild true story , but Costner added a level of emotional nuance that made Molly’s Game far more powerful.

Molly's Game

Who does kevin costner play in 'molly’s game'.

Molly’s Game tells the incredible true story of Molly Bloom ( Jessica Chastain ), a renowned skier with ambitions to become an Olympic champion. Unfortunately, a severe injury during the training for the 2002 Olympic Games forces her to radically change her intended goals and seek out new career opportunities. Costner appears in the supporting role of Molly’s father, Larry , a celebrated clinical psychologist who supported her Olympic path, and the film suggests that the two had a falling out in the aftermath of Molly’s accident. Molly can’t help but blame her father for pushing her too hard when she was younger, and assumes that he blocked her out of his life upon realizing that she would never truly be a champion. Molly is also aware that her father had several affairs, suggesting to her that his statements about “family values” are nothing but lies.

Costner’s shadow looms over Chastain’s performance as the film details Molly’s rise to power. While she may not have the physicality to compete in the Olympic Games anymore, Molly is still fiercely intelligent and knows how to read people. The film chronicles how Molly creates a powerful underground poker tournament, which attracts powerful figures such as Hollywood celebrities, athletes, business tycoons, and even a few members of the international mafia . While the film suggests that Molly has always been prone to pushing boundaries, the flashbacks involving Costner indicate that she is trying to defy the man that she felt “betrayed” her when she was at her most vulnerable.

Costner’s appearance in the third act of Molly’s Game marks a significant change of pace in the film. As with all of Sorkin's projects, Molly’s Game spares no expense when it comes to pacing, as it seems to constantly switch between Molly’s different schemes as she attempts to avoid paying any consequences. However, the pace comes to a grinding halt when she is awaiting trial in New York with her lawyer, Charlie Jaffey ( Idris Elba ). Costner appears when Molly is at her most vulnerable; it was a great way to maximize his star power during a point where the film could have become too dull.

'Molly’s Game' Doesn’t Work Without Kevin Costner

Costner delivers a powerful speech that changes the context of Molly’s journey. While Molly has spent her entire life trying to prove herself to a man she thought hated her, Larry reveals that he was only hard on her because he believed in her. He only sought to cut her out of his life upon realizing she was aware of his affairs, which made him ashamed to serve as a role model. Costner is often not given enough credit for how subtle he can be as a performer, but his monologue in Molly’s Game shows how powerful he can be when he is being understated. Like Molly, Larry is a rather prickly and awkward character, however, that doesn’t mean that he still doesn’t love her, and wants to support her when she is at her lowest.

Costner helped take Molly’s Game in a more heartfelt direction that made it easier to invest in Molly during the subsequent trial scenes. After nearly two hours of highly technical jargon regarding poker financials and the minutia of legal practices, it was refreshing to hear an entirely earnest speech from an earnest family man. Costner has appeared in some of the greatest “dad movies” of all time, such as A Perfect World and Field of Dreams , but it was nice to see him take on the role of a more flawed paternal figure who nonetheless gives Molly the words of support she needed to hear. It was a risky gamble to take a strong female character like Molly and reduce her motivation to nothing more than “daddy issues;” however, the sincere chemistry Chastain and Costner share makes the scene work way better than it would have otherwise.

Kevin Costner Is Underrated as a Supporting Actor

Although he gained prominence in the early stages of his career as one of the most popular leading men on the planet, Costner has taken on several compelling supporting roles in the last decade. Whether it's his subversive take on Pa Kent in Man of Steel , his engaging mentor in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit , or another caring paternal figure in Hidden Figures , Costner has shown that he can still leave a memorable impact on a film if he’s only in it for a limited capacity.

Molly’s Game is streaming on Netflix in the U.S.

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Molly's Game movie review & film summary (2017)
A film critic praises Jessica Chastain's performance as Molly Bloom, a real-life poker mogul, but criticizes Aaron Sorkin's script for being too verbose and self-indulgent. She also questions the film's portrayal of Molly's relationships with men and its ending.
Molly's Game
81% Tomatometer 310 Reviews 84% Audience Score 10,000+ Ratings The true story of Molly Bloom, a beautiful, young, Olympic-class skier who ran the world's most exclusive high-stakes poker game for ...
Review: The Big and Minor Stakes of 'Molly's Game'
One of the editors, Alan Baumgarten, worked on David O. Russell's "American Hustle," a movie that, like "Molly's Game," owes a large debt to Martin Scorsese's native-son crime ...
Molly's Game
Michael J. Casey Michael J. Cinema. In an unfortunately obvious way, 'Molly's Game' explores the gender gap of power while telling a salacious story of powerful men with dirty little secrets and ...
Molly's Game (2017)
Molly's Game: Directed by Aaron Sorkin. With Jessica Chastain, Idris Elba, Kevin Costner, Michael Cera. The true story of Molly Bloom, an Olympic-class skier who ran the world's most exclusive high-stakes poker game and became an FBI target.
'Molly's Game' Review: A Jessica Chastain and Aaron Sorkin Powerhouse
January 6, 2018. "Sit down," Larry Bloom (Kevin Costner) says to his daughter Molly (Jessica Chastain) near the end of Aaron Sorkin's directorial debut, Molly's Game. "I'm going to ...
'Molly's Game' Review
'Molly's Game': Film Review | TIFF 2017. Jessica Chastain stars as Molly Bloom, who ran the world's most exclusive high-stakes poker game, in Aaron Sorkin's directorial debut 'Molly's Game.'
Molly's Game is proof that Aaron Sorkin directs exactly like he writes
Molly's Game is the best of Sorkin, with many of his problematic tendencies removed, resulting in a tremendously entertaining film that turns the prolific writer into a filmmaking double-threat ...
Molly's Game review: Jessica Chastain has a winning hand in Aaron
Still, Molly's Game is a cool, crackling, confident film that appeals to your intelligence instead of insulting it. At the movies, it may be the closest we'll get to a Christmas miracle.
'Molly's Game' Review: Jessica Chastain Plays Molly Bloom
Aaron Sorkin directs and writes a film based on the memoir of Molly Bloom, a self-made gambling madam who ran underground poker games for the rich and famous. Chastain stars as a smart and assertive Molly, who faces legal troubles and powerful enemies in a cinematic and speechy story.
Molly's Game
Molly's Game is the true story of Molly Bloom a beautiful, young, Olympic-class skier who ran the world's most exclusive high-stakes poker game for a decade before being arrested in the middle of the night by 17 FBI agents wielding automatic weapons. Her players included Hollywood royalty, sports stars, business titans and finally, unbeknownst to her, the Russian mob.
'Molly's Game' review: Jessica Chastain stars
CNN —. Aaron Sorkin wrote "Moneyball," which invites comparisons to "Molly's Game," the entertaining new poker-related drama that he wrote and also directed. The more apt benchmark ...
Review: Jessica Chastain pulls a winning hand in Aaron Sorkin's
In "Molly's Game," Jessica Chastain shows a mind furiously at work as she portrays the real-life Molly Bloom. Aaron Sorkin wrote and directed a movie that, like its subject, is a game of high ...
Molly's Game (2017)
Permalink. 8/10. A fascinating story. cardsrock 30 March 2020. Aaron Sorkin's directorial debut is a solid, entertaining entry from 2017. His script is full of his trademark rapid-fire dialogue and keeps the film moving at a brisk pace. The voiceover can be a bit exhausting at times, but it adds a lot of context to the film.
Molly's Game Review
The unpredictability of the poker games are where most of the suspense comes from. The legal battle, and the ongoing battle for moral superiority between Molly (Jessica Chastain) and her attorney ...
Molly's Game Movie Review
Molly's Game Movie Review:56 Molly's Game Official trailer. Molly's Game. Community Reviews. See all. Parents say (6) Kids say (6) age 12+ Based on 6 parent reviews . fuji apllle Parent of 6, 12, 15, 16 and 17-year-old. October 28, 2022 age 2+ BrigidArmbrust Adult.
Molly's Game
Molly arrives in her best dress—she bought it for $88 at J.C. Penney—and collects $10,000 from every poker player who walks through the doors. Dean asks the players to tip her at the end of the night and, just like that, she's $3,000 richer. (Spend it on a new dress, Dean suggests.) So it goes for weeks and months.
Molly's Game Review
Release Date: 28 Dec 2017. Original Title: Molly's Game. Poker is a game of skill rather than chance, but despite the fact that livelihoods and lives can hang on the turn of a card, it has given ...
Molly's Game Movie Review
Molly's Game runs close to 2.5 hours and never feels its length, a testament to Sorkin's grasp of storytelling and pace. The film briskly moves along, keeping viewers engaged throughout the narrative's various twists and turns. The approach Sorkin takes is very reminiscent of Martin Scorsese (complete with voice-over), but never comes across as ...
Molly's Game
Molly's Game is a 2017 American biographical film written and directed by Aaron Sorkin (in his directorial debut), based on the 2014 memoir of the same name by Molly Bloom.It stars Jessica Chastain, Idris Elba, Kevin Costner, Michael Cera, Jeremy Strong, Chris O'Dowd, Joe Keery, Brian D'Arcy James, and Bill Camp.. The film follows Bloom (Chastain), who becomes the target of an FBI ...
Film Review: Molly's Game
The following review was originally published as part of our coverage of the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival.. Molly's Game, the directorial debut from lauded screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, begins with a giddy voiceover monologue about failure in sports, on both the general concept and the one specifically suffered by American downhill skier and Olympic hopeful Molly Bloom (Jessica ...
Molly's Game movie review : Molly's Game is a safe bet for the holiday
Bar the occasional nod to drugs and scantily clad waitresses, the film fails to detail what really went on behind closed doors at these exclusive games. While the ending seems hurried and ...
REVIEW: "Molly's Game"
In Molly's memoir she named several A-listers who frequented her games - movie stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Ben Affleck, rapper Nelly, and baseball star Alex Rodriguez to name a few. Many believe Cera's smarmy Player X is an amalgam of these big named celebrities who helped draw billionaires to Molly's games.
Kevin Costner's Best Performance in Years Wasn't in a Western
Molly's Game tells the incredible true story of Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain), a renowned skier with ambitions to become an Olympic champion. Unfortunately, a severe injury during the training ...
You Gotta Believe (2024)
You Gotta Believe: Directed by Ty Roberts. With Sarah Gadon, Luke Wilson, Molly Parker, Greg Kinnear. A Little League baseball team of misfits dedicate their season to a player's dying father. In doing so, they accomplish the impossible by reaching the World Series finals in a game that became an ESPN instant classic.

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