Netflix movie of the day: Molly's Game will show you the high-stakes world of underground poker
Netflix movie of the day: Molly's Game will show you the high-stakes world of underground poker
Biopics are some of my favorite genre of movies for the stranger than fiction stories they tell and Molly's Game fits the bill perfectly. The real-life Molly Bloom's journey from being a former Olympic skiing hopeful to running the world's most exclusive poker games sees her brush shoulders with all manners of society, from rock stars and athletes to FBI agents and the Russian mafia, which makes for a thrilling 140 minutes.
If you haven't seen it, then the good news is that you can now stream it as part of everything new on Netflix in April 2024 – the last time it was new on Netflix was in April 2022 and again in April 2020 so it's great to see that the streamer has re-added the crime drama to the platform. This also isn't the first time TechRadar has recommended watching the award-winning biographical film either, picking it out as one of two biopics written by Aaron Sorkin (the other being The Social Network) – who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for Molly's Game.
Sorkin adapted the screenplay for Molly's Game off the back of Bloom's memoir of the same name, and while it was his directorial debut, he'd penned several major biopics before it including Charlie Wilson's War, Money Ball and Steve Jobs (2015), as well as blockbusters like A Few Good Men and TV shows like The West Wing and more recently The Trial of the Chicago 7. The talented former playwright and aspiring actor is known for writing clever, ultra-fast-paced dialogue, including walk-and-talk scenes, both of which feature in Molly's Game.
It's movie trademarks like these that make the biopic an absorbing watch, even if Sorkin did take some creative liberties with the story. Even more compelling are the performances from Jessica Chastain, who plays Molly Bloom herself, Kevin Costner, who plays her father Larry Bloom, Idris Elba, who plays Bloom's trial lawyer Charlie Jaffey, and Michael Cera, who plays the mysterious 'player X' (it's not clear which out of the real-life A-lister celebrities – such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Affleck or Matt Damon – his character was meant to be though).
With an 81% Rotten Tomatoes score from the critics (and an 84% score from the audience), Molly's Game is one of the best Netflix movies available to stream. Many reviews praise Sorkin's "whip-snap dialogue", with The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw writing "Sorkin lets rip with another marathon-sprint of exhausting and exhilarating and exasperating dialogue". The razor-sharp script is such a defining quality of the movie that Roger Ebert's Christy Lemire says: "If you’re a fan of [Sorkin's] particular brand of impossibly intelligent characters exchanging rat-a-tat dialogue, you’ll be in heaven here. The hose is on full blast for two-plus hours. Nothing and no one seems to be holding him back, for better and for worse."