🎬 Molly's Game / Film Review

Autobiographical and semi-biographical films have always been and will always be something that will attract the audience. This little piece of time that we get as an insight into a private story of a person meets our unexpected desire for the knowledge of the lives of well-known people as well as their journey to that point. So even this year, among the candidates for the biggest awards, we have films of this genre such as I, Tony, Darkest Hour, The Disaster Artist and Molly's Game.
But sometimes some stories are difficult to switch to a movie narrative, which is why they everyone fails, from actors in the movie and behind the camera, to the viewers themselves. Where on this scale is this year's Oscar nominee in the category for Best Adaptation, Molly's Game?

Molly Bloom was once a skier with a huge Olympic potential, but after a series of injuries, her career had collapsed. Looking for bread and a roof over your head she will end up in a private circle of people who are gathering around the high-stakes poker table. Observing their game, she gained the knowledge she needed to organize such parties, and when she went for a whole decade, nothing could stop her, until seventeen armed FBI agents arrived on her door one night. From that moment on, her main goal is to release the accusations and at the same time protect all participants in the game she organized.



Molly's Game is also the directorial debut of the famous producer and screenwriter of Aaron Sorkin.
Known for The Social Network and Steve Jobs, Sorkin puts in to this movie all the familiar elements that feature his style. First of all, his protagonist is distinguished by a specific caracteristic line - they are intelligent and self-conscious, but at the same time problematic in nature, and their character is primarily revealed through the main dynamic motive that moves and carries a criminal act or something of a similar legal nature. Molly's Game is developing all these parameters, in which Bloom retrospectively tells the story and sequence of events as they have been played.

Sorkin's combination of all these elements shows that he as a director knows well the juggling with the rhythm of the film, keeping it just as it is at the beginning. Given that the film is long for two hours and twenty minutes, this venture is relatively impressive, but it is precisely the very dynamics of the film that can be rejected by some viewers. The narrative that goes through the poker game and the dialogue between Molly and her attorney scenes cover most of the film. Dialogues and narratives, with legal information, definitions, or rules of poker, are mostly in such a crazy speed you feel like you're in a car race.
Due to this dictation of the tempo, the building of all the characters in the movie suffers, so at one point you can simply ask yourself "why would I care about anyone in this film?"



On all that pale and sterile characterization, acting performances are also being added to the same bunch, because they literally couldn't offer anything more than the script itself offers. Jessica Chastain, Idris Elba and Kevin Costner are a very stellar and talented actors, and although each of them gives their maximum, they are simply stunned by an overloaded dialogue. They turn into machines that only bomb us with words and sentences, stopping them from making any kind of expression or movement that will give these characters some liveliness.

When everything is taken into account, Molly's Game is a film designed so that someone likes it and someone hates it. It's inspired by the lines of films such as Goodfellas and The Wolf of Wall Street, and will bring some level of entertainment to such audiences, but exactly where these films are brilliant, this film is relatively predictable. Molly's Game will delight you with its design of space, workmanship and ruggedness, and if you are able to withstand the game of nerves that Sorkin plays with you by entering all of the parameters mentioned in this text, repeating them infinitely, I believe that in some relaxed version you can enjoy this long poker game.