A good movie

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since I have a weak spot for Jessica Chastain and since it was available on Netflix, I was quite eager to check it out. Well, I always had a weak spot for movies dealing with poker and it turned out to be a really strong story on this subject. Indeed, it was such a different approach to the game where they didn’t actually look for the best players but, in this case the poker game actually became some kind of social event during which players with very deep pockets would have the opportunity to play against some major celebrities. However, if Aaron Sorkin is a fine writer (he even won the Academy Award for the Best Adapted Screenplay for ‘The Social Network’) I thought it was pretty obvious that it was his directing debut. Indeed, the back-and-forth in time was rather useless and annoying. Another issue was that they pretty much failed to show Molly Bloom’s life outside the high-stakes poker games. Basically, it seemed that she didn’t have any social life whatsoever but, even if it might have been true, it didn’t make her life look really attractive. As a result, they also felt compelled to vastly expand her relationship with her lawyer just because it was the only way to have her having some kind of relationship outside her employees and the poker players. However, most of the scenes involving Idris Elba were rather awkward and obviously completely made up. Concerning Kevin Costner, his character worked better and the guy gave a solid performance but the way he was suddenly brought back at the end to give some rather phony speech was pretty weak. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, it was still quite a fascinating story and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.