Review of Molly's Game (2017) by Hotelcentral — 16 Dec 2018

Give this film a 7 if you're a serious fan of poker and want to hear a lot of narration about the who, what and why.

Molly's Game feels a little bit like Goodfellas. Molly's narration starts when she's a kid and continues through nearly every scene in the film. The problem here is that Jessica Chastain delivers the narrative in what amounts to a monotone, and Molly is not a working class kid growing up in a neighborhood full of chummy mafiosi. Her father's a college professor. Her family is full of genius level IQs. And she's not only highly intelligent. She evolves into a world-class athlete headed for the Olympics (till fate intervenes) and she's gorgeous too. So by the time she's running her high stakes poker games she's proven herself extraordinary and it becomes hard to sympathize with someone who tries to tell people (including her lawyer) that she has nothing to do with the mob, and, by the way, she's tap-dancing real hard to avoid ever breaking any laws against gambling because she's such a principled person.

So principled that, in the end, she won't dish to the feds about her players because that would violate her personal code. I mean, you don't see this kind of "loyalty" in the real world mafia, and like the federal prosecutor in the film I don't believe a word of it.

But, hey, dear old Dad is sure proud. He describes the successes of Molly's two brothers in glowing terms, and then describes Molly as creating a million dollar business out of nothing but her own wit. That's some demonstration of principles.

You'd think someone as brilliant as Molly would at least have a peephole in the front door of her condo.