Molly's Game - Review

Release Date: December 25, 2017

Meh

Aaron Sorkin is a very famous screenwriter. He wrote The Social Network, Steve Jobs, and has even done great television like The Newsroom. His writing is distinctive when people say lines from his scripts, you know it. But this movie is a little different than those other projects. This is Aaron Sorkin's directorial debut, which should be a really big deal. Seeing the first trailer, I was not convinced this would be a good as it should be. I was both surprised but also let down.

Molly's Game has a few problems. The first is that no one feels at home speaking from the Aaron Sorkin script. Again, a Sorkin script has a certain feeling to it that no one in the movie really captures. Jessica Chastain really tries to make it work, but it the performance did not live up to my expectation.

The expectation I am talking about stems from the fact that Molly's Game feels like a mashup of Sorkin's two other movies. The Social Network and Steve Jobs in particular. There is a really smart protagonist faced with very difficult circumstances that intelligence cannot remedy. On top of this, the story structure is made up of continuous flashbacks stemming from a present moment. It's really too reminiscent of those two other movies without being as good.

The editing was weird in places with some very random insert shorts to fill space. The soundtrack was not at all compelling and it made me wish I was watching a different movie from Aaron Sorkin. Yes, the story is amazing, thankfully its based on real events just like his other standout works. I think that this is the weakest movie he has done so far. Maybe he wasn't ready to be a director or maybe he needed actors that could capture the flow of his work. Whatever it is, I hope his other works go up in quality.

I did have a fun time watching the movie. The story was fun like I said before. The acting was serviceable enough and it was a complete movie. It just didn't live up to my expectations.

So I would say, overall, you could watch it. You do not have to see it in theaters so definitely wait for it to rent. If you are going into the movie hoping for a Sorkin great, this is not one of them.

                                             7/10
​                 So The Social Network is still amazing