Molly’s Game: Aaron Sorkin’s ‘wild’ but true poker drama

The Social Network scriptwriter Aaron Sorkin has turned debut director with Molly’s Game, a new crime drama based on a true story – and while most critics love it, some wonder if Sorkin has taken on one too many roles.

Sorkin is best known as the writer of whip-smart, dialogue-heavy TV dramas such as the West Wing and films such as The Social Network and Steve Jobs. His new film is based upon the memoirs of Molly Bloom, a former skiing champion who became known as the “Poker Princess” for hosting games at Los Angeles’s infamous Viper Room.

Molly’s Game follows the 26-year-old Bloom as the FBI target her underground poker empire for Hollywood celebrities, athletes, business tycoons and the Russian mob. It stars Jessica Chastain, as Bloom, with Idris Elba, Kevin Costner, Chris O’Dowd and Michael Cera.

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The film debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival and won widespread praise, although not everyone was a fan.

Todd McCarthy in the Hollywood Reporter says Sorkin’s “overdue” directorial debut “entertains and makes you lean in to absorb every detail of this wild tale”. The critic says Sorkin specialises in “finding ways to tell dense and complicated stories about fascinating real-life contemporary figures”.

Molly’s Game boasts a stellar cast to help tell the story and McCarthy predicts sophisticated audiences “will eat it up”.

Peter Debruge in Variety says Sorkin “talks a good game” and it is no surprise his directorial debut is “a series of mile-a-minute monologues”. The critic argues that Sorkin subscribes to a philosophy of “tell more, tell it faster” and then re-tell it in different words for added effect, but says the “strategy works wonders”.

Molly’s Game is surprisingly cinematic and “delivers one of the screen’s great female parts”, Debruge wrote.

Jessica Chastain has nabbed one of the year’s best female roles in this “great poker procedural” but Alison Wilmore in Buzzfeed says the film also raises the question of what makes a great female protagonist.

The critic admits Molly is “smart, capable, bold, and complex”, but criticises the need to emphasise that Molly is also good, “as if that were remotely relevant”. In trying to affirm Molly’s value, the film “relieves her of her agency and most intriguing qualities”, says Wilmore.

Benjamin Lee in The Guardian criticises Sorkin for trying to dominate by taking on both the writer and director roles. The critic admits that his choice of subject, Molly Bloom, is an initial surprise because Sorkin’s track record of writing female characters has been “patchy”.

Lee says Sorkin is “clearly spellbound” by his subject and the details of her, admittedly, impressive life. But the critic complains that Chastain’s “overstuffed, overwritten voice-over” lacks the sass to turn Bloom into “the Erin Brockovich-style figure that Sorkin seems to see” and that “the scenes that should sizzle tend to fizzle out instead”.