Will the movie "Molly’s Game" become poker classics?
We’ve recently written about Top-5 movies according to PokerDiscover about poker and insisted that you should watch them. Let us remind that among those movies were:
1. Maverick
2. The Cincinnati Kid
3. Rounders
4. Mississippi Grind
5. Owning Mahowny
“Molly’s Game” is a biopic. It is based on the book of the same name of the main protagonist of the movie that had huge success. The book is in the movie during the whole story. The protagonist is Molly Bloom – an aspiring athlete. After series of injuries and unsuccessful performances in ski freestyle, she had to quit sports career. She is left with the choice to be a lawyer, as her father dreamed, or to follow her own way. The girl moves out of her parents’ house and goes to LA. There Molly gets an office job to eccentric boss who organizes undercover poker game for famous people. Molly who was unaware of any details about poker had nice wits and excellent memory – was acquainted with the rules. Sometime later she opens her new undercover casino for Hollywood stars and world celebrities, in LA to begin with and then in New York.
Poker in the movie has quite lots of time. True amateurs will see just 2-3 hands with protagonist’s commentary. Most of the movie is a slow story of Molly’s career up and downs, hard relations with her parents and long talks with the lawyer. The movie sends us to the past of Molly, and it makes the movie more interesting.
This is the first director’s work of a writer of “Molly’s Game” Aaron Sorkin. He is not new for writing scripts to biopics. We all remember his successful pictures “Social Network”, “Steve Jobs”. “Molly’s Game” was even nominated for Oscars for the best-adapted screenplay, and that is the sign of high class director’s work.
(Aaron Sorkin – the director and writer of “Molly’s Game”)
Molly Bloom herself was the co-author of the script and she approved of Jessica Chastain (Interstellar, The Martian) for the main role. We should admit that actress was wonderful in her role of the princess of poker, we trust her fully from the first minute till the end of the story. In her interviews, actress admitted that she didn’t know a single thing about poker so she had to read up and watch celebrities playing, visit live games. The actress tells that she couldn’t have ever played poker:
“I am not especially comfortable even when I play “Monopoly”. Especially when I am winning. I would feel uncomfortable by making a person broke, especially if I like this person. This is not an attitude for poker. Even if you treat your opponents with respect, you lie to them, manipulate them and take all the money from them”.
During the whole movie, we see the line of difficult relationships of Molly with her dad, played by Kevin Costner. Molly’s father, psychiatrist, was also her sports coach. He raised her daughter strictly and was trying to make her a winner. That is the education that made her personality and allowed her to become the most influential woman in the poker world and earn a multi-million wealth.
(Kevin Costner depicting the father of Molly Blum)
We can’t miss a great acting by Idris Elba, who depicted Molly Bloom’s lawyer. It is notable that he and Jessica Chastain had tough schedules and had only 10 days for shooting scenes together. During these days, they’ve shot 45 pages of the script without any rehearsals.
(Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba)
Let’s be frank, this is not “Maverick” or “Rounders”, it might get lost in history within couple of years. We don’t put the movie in TOP-5, but it is still worth watching. This is a talkative movie, it is nice to watch with the family. It has no crazy hand, bluffs, but it is full of player’s psychology. Movie is not about it. The picture is connected with gambling facilities and the world of big money, but it is mainly the drama with never-ending talks and brilliant acting of the main character. Enjoy it!