Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain) was on the verge of an Olympic career when an injury destroyed her dreams. At loose ends, Molly moves to Hollywood and takes a menial job with a douchebag real estate agent (Jeremy Strong) who also happens to run an underground poker game. Within a few months, Molly is running her own game until it's undermined by another douchebag jealous of the attention Molly shows every player but him (Michael Cera). She moves to New York, hires some Penthouse Playmates, and sets up an even more exclusive poker game. But as the stakes get higher, her personal risk also increases, and the lines between 'legal' and 'illegal' become crossed.
Aaron Sorkin wrote and directed this, so it is very talky. Chastain is good in everything but this isn't my favorite performance of hers. Kevin Costner plays against type here, which is always nice to see, even if he directly contributed to why I disliked the film ultimately. You want to talk about that? Okay. **SPOILERS** Everything boils down to this crisis of conscience moment where Molly is on a precipice looking at jail time for refusing to cooperate with prosecutors. She suddenly sees her emotionally distant father in a crowd and he leads her on a sprint psychology session where he distills all her issues down to the fact that he was a lousy dad and she knew it, resented it, and has built her entire career around amassing power over men to compensate for it. It's lazy, reductive, and soundly defeats the entire purpose of this movie, which revolves around Molly's agency, by having her dad spoon-feed her all the answers to her problems. **END SPOILERS**
It's not like this is a bad film, but I found it to be unsatisfying. Maybe you'll enjoy it more than I did. It's currently streaming on Netflix.
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