Film review: Molly's Game

published 1 June 2018

898-Mollys-Game-634 — "You call that a game face, Molly?"

Molly's Game (15) Directed by Aaron Sorkin DVD £7.99, Blu-Ray £14.99

Businesses come in all shapes and forms and, as this film based on a true story makes clear, running a high-end poker game is not so very different from running a technology start-up or hedge fund. After a freak accident ruins her skiing career, the protagonist, Molly Bloom (played by Jessica Chastain), sets off for Los Angeles for a gap year. A few chance encounters lead to her becoming the PA to a developer who runs poker games. After he steals her wages, she decides to run her own game. Things turn sour and she ends up bankrupt.

Aaron Sorkin, who wrote the screenplay and makes his directorial debut, gives us a huge amount of detail about the mechanics of what Bloom did. This helps us appreciate the huge number of business decisions she had to make on a daily basis, including how much credit to extend to gamblers, the value of intangible assets such as client lists, her approach to regulatory risk and how to deal with an attempted hostile takeover from gangsters.

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Sorkin's approach doesn't work so well when it comes to Bloom's emotional journey. From the start she comes across as a cold character, and we don't get a sense of any vulnerability, even when her business is collapsing around her. Worse, Sorkin overcompensates with a schmaltzy scene towards the very end. The film is still a cut above the average biopic, but it would have benefited from a director who was willing to take a more subtle approach to some of the exposition.

Matthew graduated from the University of Durham in 2004; he then gained an MSc, followed by a PhD at the London School of Economics.

He has previously written for a wide range of publications, including the Guardian and the Economist, and also helped to run a newsletter on terrorism. He has spent time at Lehman Brothers, Citigroup and the consultancy Lombard Street Research.

Matthew is the author of Superinvestors: Lessons from the greatest investors in history, published by Harriman House, which has been translated into several languages. His second book, Investing Explained: The Accessible Guide to Building an Investment Portfolio, is published by Kogan Page.

As senior writer, he writes the shares and politics & economics pages, as well as weekly Blowing It and Great Frauds in History columns He also writes a fortnightly reviews page and trading tips, as well as regular cover stories and multi-page investment focus features.

Follow Matthew on Twitter: @DrMatthewPartri