Molly’s Game is a rousing true story about a world class olympic skier turned underground, high-stakes poker princess. Aaron Sorkin, established screenwriter of works like The West Wing and The Social Network, makes his directorial debut with this fast-pace, high energy film.  Its expeditious dialogue and epigrammatic montages partnered with a variety of intrepid and compulsive characters and enthralling plot makes Molly’s Game the one-to-watch movie of 2018 so far.

Molly Bloom(Jessica Chastain), smart and accomplished but defiant against her pushy psychologist father (Kevin Costner) and overshadowed by her overachieving siblings, suffers a spinal injury in a skiing accident which ends here skiing career. After turning away Harvard Law school, she takes up a job with Dean Keith (Jeremy Strong) as his secretary doing thankless tasks, one of them being in charge of organizing his weekly poker game with rich men and famous celebrities. Soon Molly learns the tricks of the world of poker and eventually runs the world’s most exclusive high end poker game which included hollywood royalty, sports stars, business titans and finally, unbeknownst to her, the Russian mob. After ten years she starts getting caught up in the hole that she had dug for herself and gets arrested by 17 weapon-wielding FBI agents. Originally reluctant, criminal defense lawyer Charlie Jaffey (Idris Elba) agrees to take on Molly’s case and learns that there is so much more to Bloom’s story than what the tabloids say.

The audience gets a personal account of Molly’s story as the scenes alternate between what went down and the present where she is telling her her attorney what happened. Chastain and Elba’s performance as well as the screenplay is engaging and suspenseful as you anticipate what crazy event happens next.

“I didn’t want the movie to end. It was so intriguing and I loved the characters,” said Lisa Mei ‘18.

This film is a great example of a strong female lead that handles the male character in the plot well.

“It’s such a good movie and Molly Bloom is so badass and a great person. I wanted to learn how to play poker and run a game after that,” noted Carrie Moy ‘19

It’s hard not to admire Molly Bloom and what she went through. Almost a month after the movie came out, make sure you see it before it goes out of theaters.

Michael Gibson/STXfilms