Thoughts Upon The Demise
Of A Poker Princess-Jessica Chastain’s “Molly’s Game” (2017)-A Film Review-Of
Sorts
DVD Review
By Sam Lowell, former
film editor of American Left History
and of the American Film Gazette now
emeritus at the latter and a contributing reviewer at the former if anybody
needs my credential, my professional CV if you like
Molly’s Game, starring Jessica
Chastain, Idris Elba, Kevin Costner but he is only window dressing on this one because
the former two carry this film, 2017
I am mad as hell and I
am not going to take it anymore. Yes, I know that these are famous words that Peter
Finch uttered to a sullen world back in the 1970s as a newscaster in the
definitive film Network. They fit the
occasion however since whatever ailed Brother Finch in those times has got me
is a serious snit. As I made sure that I mentioned after my by-line space, a
by-line that I have labored in the vineyards of the film industry, book industry
too, hell, the art industry when I needed fast money to pay back alimony or the
parcel of kids, nice kids, that my three ex-wives and I raised needed college
money and until recently, very recently that designation had not been
challenged, had not been sullied by young upstarts trying to make a name for
themselves now that I am no longer reviewing on a daily basis-praise be.
If the kids want war,
hell, I am more than willing to oblige since we seem to have gone down the
slippery slope away from social cohesion and not just of account of the Bozo
who is running the asylum in Washington at the moment. Over the past few weeks
two young, up and coming journalists, reviewers I guess they would call
themselves and from what I have read of their reviews they may in fact have
promising futures-if they ever get their facts right and maybe stop hanging on
my old friend Seth Garth’s every word like it had come down from the
mountain-have flat out attempted to besmirch, yes, besmirch is the only word
that comes readily to mind my reputation. Everyone knows, or should know,
should be assumed to know, that this review business, film, books, music,
culture is a tough racket, is as one of the youngsters wrote a “dog eat dog”
environment and I will admit, admit freely that when I was young and hungry I
was as apt to try to cut up my competitors, hell, my fellow writers wherever I
landed as anybody else-as long as I got my facts right. Just ask Seth Garth who
still carries the scars from our battles as I do his.
What these two writers,
hell, what Sarah Lemoyne and subsequently young Will Bradley have been running
around erroneously trying to sell a distracted public is that back in the day,
back after I got my coveted by-line I started “mailing it in,” started having
stringers, mostly young fresh females from one of the Seven Sisters colleges
that Allan loved to hire to give the place some swag and some eye candy when
there were mostly older guys writing their brains out here write my reviews for
me. Still worse have accused me of, when desperate, taking whatever press
releases the studio public relations departments were putting out, clipping off
the tops and sending the rest off as my review so that I could keep drinking
and cavorting with women which I freely admit I liked, still like to do-with
one woman anyway. Will picked up on these Sarah comments and extended it to his
view that while I indeed was the master of the film noir genre in my time after
my major definitive book on the subject came out, a book which one and all,
even these pups continue to recognize as the “go to” book on film noir I didn’t
have a blessed original idea. Had gone the college professor route (and me
without even a college degree to my name) and lived off that one big idea
through a fistful of conferences, lectures and speaking engagements.
That last comment was
what pretty much broke the camel’s back, no, that and the snide insinuation by
Will that the only reason that I still was being published on a regular basis
and syndicated a few places was that I had been the key vote that ejected my
old friend Allan Jackson from the site manager position at this publication and
that new manager Greg Green “owed” his job to my decisive intervention.
Needless to say with all of that in the basket I immediately went to Greg and
asked for the next available review so that I could respond to these wild and
wooly children. In the interest of fairness Greg agreed (and not as I am sure
will become the “real” reason among certain youngsters that I had “bought” him)
and so I got this freaking suck-ass review of Molly’s Game about some smarty-pants ex-jock, played by comely
Jessica Chastain, who landed on her feet for a while running on the cuff poker
games for rich and famous Alpha males until she got caught in the “feds” bind,”
got caught holding the bag. Everybody knows my thing is film noir and other
older stuff but I had to take this stinker, well, not stinker because the
acting is good and the story line is kind of interesting but who could really
care about the trials and tribulations of some over-the-hill jock who couldn’t
make the cut, ice-skating, no, I think it was free-form skiing something like
that.
I will get to the damn
thing in my own good time and still I have probably already given you enough of
the “skinny,” the theme if you don’t know what skinny is for you to judge right
now whether you want to spend a couple of hours watching the drama unfold. My
long-time companion Laura Perkins who writes here occasionally loved it, maybe
because of the strong acting by Jessica somebody who played Molly Bloom (yeah,
everybody who is anybody except maybe Will and Sarah will gladly steal whatever
they can from James Joyce even names named) but I got drowsy about half way
through. Like I said this is about setting the record straight about my now
besmirched career as about reviewing this baffling film. In any case since Greg
has again in the interest of fairness told me that I will have another review
to tackle Will Bradley’s allegations I am on the scent of one Sarah Lemoyne
today who claimed in her cherished review of the original Star Wars episode from 1977 that she had researched her allegations
about my so-called “mailing it in” practices. (Jesus was Greg serious giving
that old tattered episode and series to her-hell I rejected doing it out of
hand back then when I worked for the legendary Cal Clark over at the Gazette as so much wasted soda and
popcorn on Pa’s credit card.)
I accuse, yeah, like Emil
Zola in anti-Semite Dreyfus times who one can also fruitfully steal from in a
pinch. From what I can gather, and she should be shame-faced but probably won’t
be if it is true, Sarah’s source for her accusations was, is one Leslie Dumont
who after years at Women Today where
she had a big and deserved by-line came back here to do occasional writing in
her retirement. Hell, I was the one, along with her then boyfriend Josh Breslin
(who in the now obligatory interest of transparency also writes here now), who
got her to apply for that Women Today
job when Allan Jackson was only taking care of good old boys and she was
wasting her time as a stringer. A stringer for me on occasion.
Here is what Sarah
didn’t bother to ask about, didn’t even probably have a clue to ask about since
they don’t teach this kind of thing in those vaunted Seven Sisters and
journalism graduate schools she attended is that despite her boyfriend Josh Leslie
was “making a play for me.” Truth, ask her, ask Josh. I admit I asked Leslie to
write a few pieces, maybe half a dozen, not a million like Sarah implied before
I realized that she was interested in me romantically. I will further admit
that in those days I was in an alcoholic/drug daze half the time along with
half the guys on the staff, not Josh though, not that I remember. But then I
was going through the last phases of my first divorce, was playing around and
had no desire to upset any more apple-carts. Sarah, anybody looking for truth check
it out. I prided myself on my reviews, saw my by-line not as a privilege but an
obligation to do the best I could even under those hazes.
As for the allegations
that I would take studio public relations department press releases and sent
them to Allan as Sam’s pure gold. Sure I did that for some, some turkeys like The Return Of Godzilla, Sandy Dee Doesn’t
Live Here Anymore, Benny’s Beach Blanket Bingo, stuff that should never
have seen the light of day, stuff that any self-respecting journalist would
take a flyer on. What Sarah forgot to ask Leslie, or Leslie “neglected” to
mention was that everybody did it, everybody who saw a turkey and would rather
face Satan himself in all his fire than have to write two words of original
material on the damn thing. And that included Leslie when she went to Women Today. Ask her. If that isn’t enough egg on your face for one
day then come at me again. Yeah, this is a cutthroat business, always has been
and always will be. Tell your boy Will I am coming for him next.
Oh yeah, the film. Like
I said not my cup of tea and maybe a little long-winded going through the legal
process which Molly Bloom, the notorious poker princess, the notorious
real-life poker princess according to the cover blurbs and the front end film introduction
although I admit although I love games of chance, like the horse too I didn’t know
who she was, had to face before a little rough justice. Not film noir rough
justice with some avenging angel private detective clearing the way for her
taking some slugs if necessary but a good and capable lawyer who gave as good
and he got. Charlie Jaffey, played by Idris Elba. He measured up to Molly’s
expectations of what she would have been like as a Harvard Law School lawyer if
she hadn’t been waylaid by that whole mock skiing jock stuff which went bust
before she could hop on the gravy train. Unemployed and unemployable since who
wants snow bunnies who have given up the ghost of Olympic gold, have failed one
way or another, to sell their skis and sneakers Molly heads to sunny LA to thaw
out for a while.
She does a little of
this and a little of that, cocktail waitress, the usual until she hits “pay-dirt”
with a guy who has been running, implausibly given his dirt-bagging Molly, high
stakes poker games with high profile entertainers and bankers with a taste for
the wild side-and who can pay cash on the barrelhead for their table stakes losses.
Things go along pretty well for a while and the bright and sharp Molly (she
would have made a good lawyer no question one that most lawyers would not want to
have to contest) learns the ins and out of the game. Too well for the grafter
and he fired Molly but she lands on her feet starting her own LA operation
which draws the old crowd in. Plus others recruited in various ways to keep a
pool of players in stock, a smart move. Eventually Molly and her ringer top
player known as Player X part ways and her operation sinks in LA. Some lessons
learned, especially about keeping hands away from the pot, taking her cut which
would have put her at legal risk.
So far so good and Molly heads east to New York to start anew.
No
question Molly is a beauty but already she had had enough
sense to keep business and sex apart, didn’t
get involved with the clientele which would do her no good. It is not clear
since there is no romance in this thriller whether she cared about sex or was too
consumed making the kale to give somebody a tumble. The clientele was probably
driven more by beating high profile X, Y, or Z than sex so that could have been
an angle. In New York she started to run her operation along the lines she set
down in LA. But something changed, she made the biggest mistake of all in
getting wrapped around a heavy drug regimen. Moreover her expansion plans went
awry. Her judgement got clouded, for example, in New York City of all places,
she let a guy named Boris, Yuli, Vladimir, or whatever show up with an off-hand
Monet from off the wall if his “art gallery” in a plain brown wrapping paper as
collateral and she lets him in.
This is where she gets
in way over her head-she is in the crossfire between the FBI, the federal
courts in the city and every bad ass operation from the Russian mafia (you
think maybe the Monet guy might have been “connected”) to the Italian who wanted
in on the action-strong-arming the deadbeats who she was letting play on the
cuff). The only good thing she did through this whole horror show of deceit,
fraud, Ponzi schemes, and letting players ride on her credit line was to get
Jaffey. Why? Well it is always best, just as when you are looking for a private
investigator, when looking for a lawyer to get one who has worked the other side,
been a prosecutor. She got off in the end although she didn’t make a very good
play by turning down a deal to get her dough back for basically finking. That
is to the good in the circles I grew up in. Still she is deep in debt, has a
ton of back taxes and a felony rap on her sheet. In the end she really needed a
corner boy to guide her through this craziness more than a lawyer but given the
situation she at least had that good lawyer. Strong performances by Jessica and
Idris but still not my kind of film-sorry
