Near the end
of Molly’s Game Molly Bloom has a conversation with her father, a
brilliant therapist who throughout the flashbacks we have seen of them has been
the bane of her existence. At the time, Molly is facing prison time for a RICO
indictment and her fate is still uncertain.
Her father is
played by Kevin Costner who was in the midst of a late career revival that has
showcased some of his best work as an actor that had started with his winning
an Emmy for his work in the limited series Hatfields & McCoys and
would eventually lead with his being cast in the groundbreaking Yellowstone.
Reviewing his role in this movie,
however, Costner admitted to being terribly nervous shooting it because he knew
that Sorkin was essentially making his character explain to Molly – and the
audience – the reasons for everything she had done. The monologue he delivers
is a highpoint of Costner’s career.
Costner begins
by saying that he’s going to do what everyone has wanted therapists to do for
ninety years and that’s just give her the answers. It is a three year session delivered in three
minutes and it basically does lay bare everything Molly has been doing and why
she has done it. I won’t give all the
revelations here (you need to hear it for yourself if you haven’t seen the
movie) but I want to focus on the first year of therapy.
Costner’s character
tells his daughter that Molly essentially decided to blow up her gold-plated
resume and essentially go down the long road that has led to her to facing jail
time because she liked having power over powerful men. Costner later tells her
that was a red herring for the real reason, but Sorkin didn’t have Costner say
it for nothing. Indeed, I think that’s what drew Sorkin to this story when he
chose to make his directorial debut.
I believe in a
way Molly’s Game is the completion of an unofficial trilogy that Sorkin
has been working on over the past decade with the first two movies being The
Social Network and Steve Jobs about toxic masculinity in the
world. I will deal with the first two
movies eventually in this series but Molly’s Game is by far the most obvious
example of this because while the first two movies only the lead character is an
example of this, in Molly’s Game practically every character in this
movie is practicing some version of it.
The story
begins when Molly is basically drafted by her horrible hedge fund manager boss
to help run his weekly poker game because his usual helper is sick. We first
meet him when he berates her for bringing him ‘poor people bagels’, we later learn
that’s a euphemism for something much work.
(It probably tells you all you need to know about her first boss that he
is played by Jeremy Strong, who had just broken on to the national
consciousness that year in the first season of Succession.) Molly knows
nothing about poker before she is invited to the game; she is only working for
him until she can get to her next job. But she goes to work for him, googles
every major term on the internet and by the end of the first game, she knows
how to handle it better than he does.
In a very
short time this becomes obvious to Dean and his finances and life is getting far
worse. He takes all of this out on
Molly, refuses to listen to her advice and fires her. By this time, however,
Molly has befriended the most important player in the game, a movie star she
refers to only as Player X. (I don’t think Michael Cera has ever given a more
frightening performance in his life.)
She manages to
build up a huge following but Player X becomes more dissatisfied with his poker
players and demands she find ‘new fish’. Among the fish she finds is Harlan Eustice
(Bill Camp) who may be the only decent person she meets in her experience. One
day he loses the worst player in the game and goes full tilt. By the end of the
night, he is in debt $1.5 million dollars and is in hock to Player X. Player X
has already made his motivations very clear when he tells Molly: “I don’t like
paying poker. I like destroying lives.” By the time Molly realizes just how
horrid he is, she says the wrong thing and she gets fired.
Her final stop
is in New York where she is now running the poker game completely on her own
with nobody’s backing. At this point in her life, she is addicted to alcohol
and drugs and has begun to violate federal law.
She is so utterly buried in her own darkness that she doesn’t notice
when three major Russian mobsters begin playing in her game and actually thinks
that when the Cosa Nostra ‘suggests’ they can assist her, she’s in a position
to refuse.
Much of this
story is in Molly Bloom’s biography of the same name but that’s not the story
that Sorkin chooses to focus on. I honestly
think if he had Molly’s Game, despite the incredible performance of
Jessica Chastain, would have been dark to the point of unwatchable. It does not
help matters that Molly spends of the movie increasingly unsympathetic and more
than willing to get deeper in when she has more than one opportunity to get out. Even compared to all of the horrible people
she surrounds herself with, Molly only looks marginally better by comparison.
The story that
Sorkin chooses to tell is to essentially have Molly tell her version of events
to her attorney Charlie. Their relationship is problematic from the start,
considering that Molly is no position to pay him, refuses to take a plea even
when its in her best interests, constantly chooses to do anything that would
not help in her defense, and will often needle Charlie that even the terms of
the indictment are wrong. (She argues at one point that she should be charged
because she’s running a game of chance and poker is a game of skill.)
Charlie
remains the only person in her corner despite everything she does to make his
life difficult, and as great as Chastain is in this film, the star of the movie
is Idris Elba as Charlie. Ever since he became an overnight sensation for his iconic
work as Stringer Bell on The Wire, Elba has been one of the most extraordinary
actors in either movies or TV. Whether he is the ruthless detective John Luther,
playing Nelson Mandela or working as either a hero or villain in so many movies,
you can’t take your eyes off him , even when he’s in a true disaster like the catastrophic
The Dark Tower. Charlie takes everything
Molly tells him completely calmly and rationally no matter how badly she works
to hurt her defense. Charlie is a single father who is home-schooling his adolescent
daughter, who Molly spends so much time in the movie berating her father to. At
a certain point they have a discussion about The Crucible which ends up
being critical to the final minutes of the movie.
At the time, I
was utterly baffled by Molly’s actions in one of the last scenes, but with time
I understand it better. (Minor spoilers here.)
Molly has finally told the FBI that she knows nothing about the Russian
mob that can help their investigation. They more or less acknowledge that all
they want is ‘color’ for the press for the case, which is what Molly has
believed is what they’ve been doing this for the whole time. They then try to argue that Molly is more
involved in the conspiracy by pointing out a wiretap in which one of the
gangsters has mentioned some variation of the phrase “Get Molly” fifteen times.
Molly then gently points out that they are talking about the drug.
Charlie goes
into hysterics and then delivers a monologue that is the highpoint of the movie
and some of the best work Elba has ever done. He utterly and completely berates
the entire process of the investigation and everything the government has done
in order to put Molly in the position. He makes it very clear that Molly has been
privy to some of the most incredible government and financial secrets in America
and the world but has refused not only to use them to bargain with but use
their names in the book she’s trying to market to get herself out of debt. “She’s
got the winning lottery ticket here, and she won’t cash it!” he shouts “She
does not belong in a RICO indictment. She belongs on a Box of Wheaties.” He finishes
up by basically demanded that do the right thing and drop the charges. (Both he
and Chastain should have received Oscar nominations for this movie; Sorkin’s
screenplay was the only nomination the film received. Given that both Actress and Supporting Actress
deservedly went to Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell for Three Billboards
Outside Ebbing, Missouri it’s hard to complain about who eventually won.)
In the last
meeting between Molly and Charlie before they go into court, Charlie tells them
that they have a new plea agreement. The
government has not admitted its mistakes nor do they have any intention of dropping
the charges. Essentially they offer a reduced sentence with the sweetener that
the money they seized from her at the start of this indictment – money that was
not criminally obtained and that in addition to everything else, she has now
been forced to pay taxes on – will be given back to her. The government is essentially bribing her to play
ball, and they’re using her own money to do it. Molly refuses and she and Charlie have a loud
argument in which he tries to convince her as to why she is being loyal to all
of these horrible people who have done nothing to stand up for her. Molly than
expresses the guilt that she feels and gives a speech that sounds profound but if
you hear it, is meaningless. Her
decision to plead guilty and not take the government’s deal does not make sense
in that context. If however, you consider that this is just one more
manipulation of powerful men decided to use Molly and throw her away when they’re
done with her – and there’s no one more powerful than the U.S. government, then
Molly’s actions are far more logical and keeping with her refusal to go along with
those monstrous maneuvers.
Jessica
Chastain is one of the greatest actresses in history. She broke onto the scene
in a huge way in 2011. She received a Best Supporting Actress nomination for The
Help but she was in four other films that year which could have earned her
nominations; I think her work in the criminally underrated Take Shelter was
far more worthy. I don’t think Chastain
has ever given a bad performance in her life, whether it’s in box office hits
like Interstellar or The Martian, unseen films like A Most Violent
Year or Miss Sloane or for films that showcase her to her fullest
like Zero Dark Thirty or The Eyes of Tammy Faye which won her an
overdue Oscar. She was extraordinary in last year’s incredible limited series Scenes
from a Marriage and was just as impressive in George and Tammy earlier
this year. The decision to ignore her for an Emmy nomination last year was
inexplicable; considering she’s already won a SAG award this year, it’s inconceivable
she won’t get a nod this year.
Her performance
as Molly in this movie is almost like every other character she ends up playing;
there’s steel in her even when she is incredibly vulnerable. Molly is part of a
family of athletes and Molly looked like she had a career as an Olympic skier ahead
of her when a freak accident destroyed her leg and career. That scene and its
aftermath open and close the movie. Molly has spent her entire life not only in
the shadow of her father but her two elder brothers and at one point she said
that she might have been the most highest ranked female skier in the country
but wasn’t the mostly highly valued athlete in her family. The competitive edge is always present in
Molly. Blooms are trained to win, no matter how ugly victory might be and that being
dismissed – considered a loser – that drives Molly more than anything else.
Molly also knows she will be underestimated for being a woman but has no problem
playing into it; when she hosts her first poker game, she dresses as ‘the Cinemax
version of herself’, hires Playboy models to run her New York poker game and
constantly dismisses the affections of one of her players in New York, even
though that’s the one that gets her into trouble. At the end of the day, Molly really believes
that her father never loved her as much as her brothers and even she is shocked
when she learns why it seemed that way.
The original biography
ends with the actual Bloom pointing out that of the thirty-four people charged
by the government “I was the only woman.” Chastain’s Bloom never points that out and
Sorkin wouldn’t consider this a disadvantage because so many of his strongest
characters over the years have been women, from Abbey Bartlett and CJ Cregg in The
West Wing, Dana Whitaker in Sports Night and Sydney Ellen Wade in The American
President. And those are the fictional ones: in the movies we met: Julia Roberts
Joanne Herring, the activist who helps Charlie Wilson help arm fighters in Afghanistan
to beat the Soviets, and Kate Winslet’s Joanna, the only person who can tell
Steve Jobs the truth about who he is. What do all of these characters have in
common? They all have power over powerful men. I don’t know if this is the story
the actual Molly Bloom anticipated being told when Aaron Sorkin chose to tell it
but I doubt she can complain how the world ended up seeing her.
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