海角大神

鈥淢olly鈥檚 Game,鈥� Aaron Sorkin鈥檚 directorial debut, is 鈥� surprise! 鈥� chockablock with dialogue. You can practically close your eyes and still get the gist of the movie. Not that you would necessarily want to close your eyes: the actors, including Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba, are a showy bunch. 聽

Chastain鈥檚 Molly Bloom, as Bloom herself detailed in her bestselling autobiography, had ambitions to become an Olympic skier before injuries curtailed her career. For a while, she was an assistant to a piggish Los Angeles real estate mogul and eventually ended up running unlicensed high-stakes poker games in New York and L.A. Eventually the FBI, suspecting she had links to the Russian mafia, caught up with her.

At 140 minutes, 鈥淢olly鈥檚 Game鈥� is a long sit, made to seem even longer because of Sorkin鈥檚 herky-jerky flashback structure and his penchant for repeating smartypants material over and over again. Molly has most of the film鈥檚 most ringing monologues, and Chastain delivers them with the proper high-octane oomph, but too much of this film assumes that we care as much about the finaglings and underhandedness of the superrich as Sorkin does. Well, I don鈥檛 care as much, or at least Sorkin hasn鈥檛 made me want to. (I felt the same way about 鈥淭he Big Short,鈥� which 鈥淢olly鈥檚 Game鈥� resembles.)

Sorkin is caught up in the same trap that other filmmakers, including Martin Scorsese with 鈥淭he Wolf of Wall Street,鈥� have fallen into: He is attempting a grand-scale indictment of the venal money culture but he is too enamored of the venal rich to make the indictment stick. The parade of high-rollers (including a pungent cameo by Michael Cera as 鈥淧layer X鈥�) is far more interesting than the do-gooders who occasionally pop up to shame Molly.聽

As was also true in such Sorkin-scripted films as 鈥淭he Social Network鈥� and 鈥淪teve Jobs,鈥� he goes in for some heavy-duty Freudian character analysis. In 鈥淭he Social Network,鈥� it all comes down in the end to Mark Zuckerberg wanting to impress the girlfriend who jilted him. In 鈥淪teve Jobs,鈥� the corporate genius is a world-class narcissist and commitmentphobe. In 鈥淢olly鈥檚 Game,鈥� Molly gets a psychological read-out from none other than her psychiatrist father, played with hardheaded assurance by Kevin Costner, who has a big scene in which he gives her, in his words, 鈥渢hree years of therapy in three minutes.鈥� (It was more than three minutes.)聽

All of this jawboning and by-the-numbers psychologizing is made somewhat tolerable because of Elba, who plays Molly鈥檚 lawyer, Charlie Jaffey. Elba is one of those actors who radiates his own force field even if he鈥檚 sitting still, or just tying his shoe. His no-nonsense performance helps to eradicate some of Sorkin鈥檚 nonsense.

Chastain鈥檚 performance is a bit more problematic. She鈥檚 certainly a powerhouse, but she makes Molly so flinty and defiant that, after a while, a sameness sets into the portrayal. Chastain has a tendency to turn herself into a hard-shelled avenger, as in 鈥淶ero Dark Thirty鈥� and 鈥淢iss Sloane,鈥� and this performance is in line with those. It should not be necessary, in playing unyielding characters, to clamp down so hard on emotional nuance.聽

Most movies these days (as opposed to the best television shows) are so laden with substandard dialogue that it might seem peevish to complain about 鈥淢olly鈥檚 Game,鈥� which revels in high-style jabbering. But Sorkin doesn鈥檛 pull off what, say, Paddy Chayefsky, in his scripts for such films as 鈥淣etwork鈥� and 鈥淭he Hospital,鈥� achieved. He doesn鈥檛 create a world in which all those monologues and contretemps really sing. Most of the arias in 鈥淢olly鈥檚 Game鈥� don鈥檛 achieve liftoff, and so neither does the movie. Grade: C+ (Rated R for language, drug content, and some violence.)