Molly's Game: All in!

Molly's Game (2017) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for profanity, drug use and brief violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.5.18

Truth isn’t merely stranger than fiction; sometimes it’s flat-out astonishing.

Molly’s Game is the mesmerizing study of Molly Bloom, who — in a parallel universe — might have been the gold medal-winning Olympics skier that she was trained to become, from an early age.

Having become master of her own high-stakes poker domain, Molly (Jessica Chastain)
strides confidently through the room, fully aware of the impact she has on her all-male
clientele.

Or, maybe, she’d have blossomed into the high-profile lawyer being nurtured by her academic talents.

In our world, derailed by a freak accident and occasionally hampered by a rebellious spirit, she applied her preternatural intelligence to become — of all things — the “Poker Princess” known in upper-echelon circles for running weekly, invitation-only games for some of the wealthiest high-rollers in Los Angeles and New York.

Her rise and fall — and rise and fall, and rise and fall — is detailed with supernova intensity by famed scripter Aaron Sorkin, also making a splashy directorial debut in this adaptation of Bloom’s page-turning 2014 memoir, Molly’s Game: From Hollywood’s Elite to Wall Street’s Billionaire Boys Club, My High-Stakes Adventure in the World of Underground Poker.

And yes, the film is as breathtaking as that title.

Perhaps too breathtaking.

As Sorkin’s longtime fans are well aware, his rat-a-tat dialog sizzles with the manic incandescence of classic Hollywood screwball comedies, albeit on a far higher level of dramatic gravitas: often laden with information dumps that demand not only one’s full attention, but (couldn’t hurt) a college graduate’s vocabulary.

There’s a reason Sorkin’s best-scripted episodes of TV’s gone but still much-beloved West Wing clocked in at a fast-paced 45 minutes; most viewers probably couldn’t have endured more. The same narrative ferocity can be found in any isolated 15 to 20 minutes of Molly’s Game, particularly as anchored by Jessica Chastain’s hypnotically alluring starring role, and Idris Elba’s equally powerful supporting performance.

Taken as a whole, though, this 140-minute film is exhausting. Even too many chocolate milkshakes can overwhelm the most enthusiastic palate, and — as director — Sorkin has over-indulged his writing sensibilities. (Tellingly, this fate that did not befall his Academy Award-winning script for 2010’s The Social Network, when his efforts were carefully modulated by director David Fincher.)

Molly narrates her own unlikely saga, Chastain giving these events the stream-of-consciousness passion of a seasoned sportscaster. As is his frequent custom, Sorkin eschews a conventional linear approach for a three-pronged attack divided mostly between the “present” — April 2013 through May 2014 — and the whirlwind events that began a decade earlier. Occasional deeper flashbacks illuminate the childhood training sessions under her disciplinarian father, Larry (Kevin Costner), by profession a clinical psychologist and Colorado State University professor.

Steve Jobs: A tarnished Apple

Steve Jobs (2015) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for profanity and dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.23.15

The ensemble cast is strong, impeccably directed and well-suited to each role.

The dialog is rat-a-tat enthralling: classic Aaron Sorkin arguments and badinage, with verbal zingers and snarky rejoinders landing like physical blows, recipients wincing in pain or retreating behind wary glances. It’s the stuff that made The Social Network and TV’s West Wing and The Newsroom so spellbinding: the intelligent, sharp-edged and fast-paced discourse that we’re neither clever enough, nor quick-witted enough, to deliver in real life.

Struggling to find some way to connect with the young daughter whose paternity he denies,
Steve Jobs (Michael Fassbender) encourages Lisa (Makenzie Moss) to play with a
spanking-new Macintosh computer. "You can't break it," he promises.

It feels more like an intimate, minimalist stage play, and in fact Sorkin has structured it that way, with three distinct acts. I was reminded, more than once, of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, made into a similarly mesmerizing 1992 film.

But those characters were fictitious, if familiar archetypes that we’d likely find in the rapacious atmosphere of a high-end, nail-the-deal-no-matter-what real estate office.

Steve Jobs, in contrast, profiles the actual Apple guru, with ample attention paid to the close advisors circling his incandescent star. (He doesn’t appear to have any actual friends.)

And not once, not for a second, did I feel that Sorkin and director Danny Boyle had come anywhere close to capturing the actual Steve Jobs. This relentlessly distracting fact ruins the entire film. Although clearly a sort of “truthiness” — the script is adapted from Walter Isaacson’s thoroughly researched biography of Jobs — this drama seems to exist in a parallel universe where Sorkin has indulged in his own myth-making.

Goodness knows, Jobs was highly skilled at crafting and stage-managing the persona he displayed in public. And, in the interest of full disclosure, Sorkin has described this film as an “impressionistic portrait” of Jobs: an abstraction concocted to surround the Apple guru with the same six characters, at three crucial points in his career, and let them “bang on each other.”

A “heightened version of real life,” Boyle adds, in the press notes.

Balderdash. Those quotes sound like a defensive excuse: an effort to get ahead of the negative publicity destined to emerge — and it definitely has — after Jobs’ actual associates begin to complain, quite noisily, that Sorkin’s so-called portrait is pure hooey.

The degree to which this does or doesn’t prove off-putting will depend on each viewer’s allegiance to truth, and/or a sense of the real-world Jobs. Taken purely on its own merits, Boyle and Sorkin’s film deserves all the descriptive accolades cited in my opening paragraphs; it is riveting.

But even if we give Boyle and Sorkin the benefit of that particular doubt, we cannot escape one glaringly obvious problem: The Steve Jobs depicted here is a relentless, abusive, unapologetic bully. Michael Fassbender’s nuanced performance notwithstanding, there’s no trace of the persuasive, charismatic futurist who inspired and demanded greatness from his associates and staff.

This big-screen Jobs is just a cruel bastard. He couldn’t inspire anybody to change a light bulb, let alone deliver the miracles that routinely emerged from Apple. And all viewers, even clueless tech luddites, will understand the utter wrongness of this dynamic.

That said, one cannot argue with Sorkin’s clever narrative structure.

Moneyball: Thoughtful slugger

Moneyball (2011) • View trailer for Moneyball
Four stars. Rating: PG-13, for occasional profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.23.11


You just can’t beat the romantic, almost spiritual atmosphere of a good baseball movie.

Other sports-themed dramas — football, basketball, tennis, whatever — simply don’t deliver the emotional oomph of The Natural, Field of Dreams, The Pride of the Yankees and many, many others. Baseball movies — like the sport itself — aren’t merely about the game; they’re more akin to a religious experience.

Forced to wait in the outer office like some no-account hired hand, Oakland
Athletics general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) suspects that his efforts to
trade players with the Cleveland Indians will come to nothing ... but, at the
moment, he sees no other options. That view is about to change, as will
Beane's entire vision of how best to create a winning baseball team.

Moneyball belongs in their company: a rather unconventional entry, to be sure, but one suffused with its own type of magic.

Director Bennett Miller’s thoughtful drama, ostensibly a profile of Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), actually concerns one man’s quixotic quest to re-write the fundamental principle that had driven baseball for decades: the notion that the best team could — would — be assembled by obtaining the best players money could buy.

And for “best,” insert “most expensive.” After all, a player commanding an eight-figure salary must be worth every penny, right?

Ah, but is a collection of ego-inflated prima donnas actually a team? Therein lies the question.

Scripters Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network) and Steven Zaillian (Schindler’s List), working from a story by Stan Chervin — who, in turn, adapted Michael Lewis’ book, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game — have quite cleverly written the All the President’s Men of baseball, and made the result equally fascinating. Just as William Goldman spun espionage and intrigue from the grinding research and day-to-day fact-checking of newspaper reporters, Sorkin and Zaillian have made a rich, engrossing brew of economics, statistics and charts.

An impressive feat, to say the least.

Miller has made it even better with a well-cast collection of realistic characters: dreamers, pragmatists, visionaries and stubborn naysayers. Change doesn’t come without pain.

We meet Beane and his Oakland Athletics in the aftermath of the 2001 season, just as their best players are cherry-picked by other franchises with deeper pockets. The A’s are left gutted, with Beane nearly apoplectic over the realization that his team is little more than a candy store for the Yankees and other wealthier rivals. The playing field isn’t level, and he resents it.

A humiliating attempt to horse-trade with the Cleveland Indians draws Beane’s attention to somebody who seems out of place in that office: a quiet, couch-potato nebbish whose opinion inexplicably carries some weight. Beane tracks this individual to his desk — a delightful scene, well staged by Miller — and thus meets Peter Brand (Jonah Hill).

Charlie Wilson's War: Audacious slice of recent history

Charlie Wilson's War (2007) • View trailer
Four stars (out of five). Rating: R, for profanity, drug use, nudity and violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.10.08


Those who wonder if truth really is stranger than fiction need look no further than Charlie Wilson.

The East Texas congressman's wild escapade in Afghanistan is the sort of crazed endeavor that wouldn't be believed if it turned up in a mainstream thriller; it's a throwback to the gung-ho statesmanship of President Theodore Roosevelt, whose flamboyant style was portrayed so well in 1975's The Wind and the Lion.

When Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks, left) demands to know precisely what sort
of weapon would be required to down a Soviet war helicopter, scruffy CIA agent
Gust Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman, center) introduces the congressman
to a chess-playing expert on Soviet intel named Mike Vickers (Christopher
Denham). These are merely three of many colorful characters who slyly
orchestrate what comes to be known as "Charlie Wilson's War."

But that story — highly fictionalized, despite being lifted from an actual historical incident — took place during simpler times, when one still could imagine two men changing the destinies of entire countries. The events of Charlie Wilson's War, by contrast, are scarcely two decades old ... and apparently far closer to actual truth.

The setting is the early 1980s, and we're forced to believe that an unlikely trio — a Texas congressman best known as a party animal, a thoroughly vexed CIA agent and a wealthy Texas socialite who had found God — moved bureaucratic mountains so that long-suffering Afghan rebels could get the weapons they needed, in order to repel the invading Soviet army.

Jaw-dropping.

I'm not sure which is worse … accepting the notion that Wilson managed to finesse the Washington, D.C., system and engineer this nutball scheme, or the possibility that this sort of behavior is business as usual on Capitol Hill.

And while screenwriter Aaron Sorkin — adapting George Crile's best-selling book — clearly cherry-picked details and messes a bit with the timeline, the basic facts are so wonderfully audacious that they cannot be dismissed. When asked how the Russians were defeated in Afghanistan, then-Pakistani President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq replied, "Charlie did it."

OK, sure, quite a few more people were involved, and the truth was more complicated.

But not all that much...

Tom Hanks is perfectly cast as Wilson, who by 1979 has represented Texas' second district for six years, and has a reputation derived solely from his nickname: "Good time Charlie."

Wilson loves alcohol and women, and not necessarily in that order; he also isn't too judicious about the company he keeps. Indeed, we first meet him in the fantasy suite of a Las Vegas casino, relaxing in a hot tub with a few strippers and other questionable companions.

It seems an unduly salacious beginning for a saga of political machinations, but this is the very setting where the actual Wilson had his epiphany, when his attention was distracted by a televised 60 Minutes profile — produced by Crile — about the Afghans who, armed with the equivalent of flintlocks, were trying to wage war against the assault helicopters of the invading Soviet army.