Starring: Jessica Chastain, Idris Elba, Kevin Costner, Michael Cera, Chris O’Dowd, Jeremy Strong
Director: Aaron Sorkin
Release date: 1st January 2018
Young Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain) is a Champion Skier. Her dad (Kevin Costner) is a hard taskmaster and pushes her to be better and better. One day she has a huge life changing accident, but she doesn’t let it define her. By the age of 20, she has made the US Olympic Ski Team. 12 years later she makes the move to Hollywood and not long after that, there is a bust by the FBI and Molly is arrested. We jump back in time to see the young Molly getting a job in a Cuban club, shortly followed by a job as an office assistant. With a veracious appetite for learning and bettering herself, Molly begins to learn all she can about the game of Poker and soon she’s running her own game nights. Unfortunately for her, the Law takes a very dim view of such practices. Can she keep her head above water without getting caught?
The movie is based on the true story of Molly Bloom, a young and enterprising woman who at 26 years old was behind some of the most secret and high stakes poker games in the world. It’s said that the games originated in the Viper Rooms in Los Angeles, California. She wrote a memoir entitled, ‘Molly’s Game: The True Story of the 26-Year-Old Woman Behind the Most Exclusive, High-Stakes Underground Poker Game in the World’.
I really enjoyed ‘Molly’s Game’ as a movie and was pretty happy with the casting. Kevin Costner seems to be making a habit these days of playing old, grizzled dads/ blokes. Doesn’t make me enjoy his work any less though. He’s pretty consistent in the movies he does and never really fails to do the job. I enjoyed the story but to be honest, I found the movie to be just too long. I think that they could probably have cut about 30minutes off it and not really lost anything from the story. Saying that though, it’s definitely a great movie to watch and the calibre of acting is of a very high standard. Jessica Chastain is at the top of her game in this one and shows why she’s currently one of Hollywood’s big guns. She’s been in some great movies in recent years, including; ‘The Zookeepers Wife’, ‘Interstellar’, ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ and ‘Crimson Peak’.
If you’re looking for a movie that will educate and inform as well as entertain, then give ‘Molly’s Game’ a watch. A great story as well as some great acting, you won’t go far wrong.
Overall: 7.5/10
