Review of Molly's Game (2017) by Berik — 31 Oct 2019

Meet Molly. An unlikable, self absorbed victim of an insecure father that forced her into being an anti-social elitist that was struck a bad hand while competing in the olympics. When she closes the door on her father, she starts orginazing poker games. And then stuff goes wrong, she faces prosecution and suddenly a sense of pride and morality is injected into the movie that comes out of nowhere...

So, Molly was pushed from an early age to be 'a winner' by her psychotic father. Even though this gives her acute scoliosis, it doesn't stop him from pushing her even further. Apparently, her brothers became succesfull through this treatment, and she is the black sheep of the family. I'm getting sick to my stomach just from putting this into sentences.

Two hours into the movie it is suddenly revealed that her dad was ashamed of cheating on molly's mother, and that changed molly into something that hates the idea of a normal relationship. This pretty much drops out of nowhere as the first two hours are really just about Molly orginazing poker matches, and shows how rich this makes her. That, and Jessica Chastain had to do the entire movie with her breasts being pushed up to distract the audience from this weirdly written script.

It seems like the movie doesn't know what it wants to be. Does it want to show how cool it is to get succesfull and rich in orginazing poker, or does it want to be some drama about psychotic personalities? Calling it entertaining would go way too far for me. It's an average movie. I give it a 6/10.