First Take: Molly’s Game- you just lost the game

SYNOPSIS: 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.

Aaron Sorkin is arguably one of the greatest screenwriters working today purely because of how well he crafts the dialogue on his works, creating seminal classics like his TV series The West Wing, A Few Good Men, The Social Network and Steve Jobs (which will be reviewed very soon here on the blog) amongst others. Until now, he has only written films, and Molly’s Game marks his directorial debut- and it’s rather impressive as you’d expect.

Sorkin directs the film really well, taking his script to the screen with relative ease, however, the pacing of the film needs some more work, as at a tight 2 hours 20 minutes, it feels a little too stretched out for my liking- but the iconic style of dialogue he’s known for certainly made up for it, taking the real Molly Bloom’s book and adapting it as only he knows how. It’s shot excellently by Charlotte Bruus Christensen, but the real highlight for me was Daniel Pemberton’s score- I’ve heard a lot of his stuff lately, and 2018 could arguably be his breakout year for film scoring.

The cast are brilliant too, with Jessica Chastain putting in some outstanding work as ever, Idris Elba continuing to make waves in Hollywood with another hell of a performance to add to his repertoire, and a great team of supporting talents to make this true story come to life on the big screen- sure, the film may have its issues as well as some inaccuracies due to some legal constraints, but the performances alone are worth the price of admission.

THE VERDICT

While it may be a little too long for its own good, Molly’s Game is a brilliant directorial debut from Aaron Sorkin that delivered on the hype, but only just. It’ll have a good awards run without fail, but something about this film didn’t sit right with me.

RATING: 4.5/5