Director: Aaron Sorkin
Year Released: 2017
Rating: 3.0
Skier Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain), with her career on the slopes over with because of a freak accident, somehow stumbles into working for Dean (Jeremy Strong), who runs high-stakes poker games for celebrities ... but when she gets fired by him she organizes her own games with even higher limits and more shady dudes (like the Russian mobsters), which kinda bothers the Feds a teensy bit. Sorkin is behind not only the script but also the camera (for the first time) and for the most part he keeps himself under control: it's presented in a streamlined and quite thorough fashion, with numerous bits of information blurted out rapidly (usually in voice-over), and little fat to trim - I think the director sees the same chutzpah in Bloom that he has in himself. There are, however, some small flaws that need to be mentioned: Molly, who is shown to be a very bright, very savvy go-getter, also appears to be a bit defiantly sleazy and lacking in candor: can someone 'that intelligent' (who 'knows everything') not realize that Russians with millions to throw around aren't involved in bad things? Didn't she ever reflect on the morality of associating with other sleazy people (my guess: she never 'named names' to protect herself)? Is law school really that intolerable (I'm friends with several lawyers, so this is rhetorical)? She isn't a credible narrator ... but if she avoided prison time (with Inverse Stringer Bell as her attorney), so be it. As for that god-awful ice skating scene, with Molly's Pop (Kevin Costner) spewing psychoanalysis ... Fincher would have had the scissors handy.
