Bad feminist

Molly’s Game marks the directorial debut of Hollywood’s most celebrated screenwriter, Aaron Sorkin, and is based on his adaptation of the memoir by Molly Bloom. Nope, me neither, but she’s the one-time Olympic skier who, at the age of 26, started a high-stakes poker game for ‘the richest, the most powerful men in the world’ and ended up with the FBI in her face. Poor Molly, we’re meant to think, when the FBI ends up in her face, but I was delighted. Bang her up! This has been posited as the antidote to all those male-driven, big money Wall Street films, with Sorkin even declaring Ms Bloom a ‘feminist icon’. Well (she says, haughtily), we will see about that.

The film’s opening happens at breakneck speed and is, to be fair, quite exciting. It’s a rat-a-tat-tat account of Molly’s early skiing career, as narrated by Molly (Jessica Chastain), who will narrate throughout.