Molly's Game: a pretty good true story

I have to admit I am a sucker for true stories because they are so much more interesting to me than fiction. This is likely why I prefer non-fiction books as well. I broke from my week of shocking Korean movies because needed something a bit less traumatising. The nightmares were just getting to be too much.

Molly's Game centers around the life of a quite talented woman who just happened to be good at everything. She graduated top of her class in undergraduate studies (I don't remember what it was in) and was a clear choice to be accepted to really any law school that she chose. She also was a world-class freestyle skier and was attempting to qualify for the 2002 Olympics where a one-in-a-million chance with equipment malfunction resulted in her having a nasty crash and of course eliminated her from the competition.

After the fall in the Olympic qualifiers she decided to instead move to Los Angeles to just whatever. By chance she ends up being an assistant to some Hollywood big-shot (he's a real jerk) who also happens to run underground poker games. She didn't know much about poker when she started and was basically just a bookkeeper and bartender who worked almost entirely for tips.

She finds out really quickly that she has a real knack for this as well and starts to organize her own private games and since her boss (the organizer of the games) is such a dick. She is soon running one of the most sought after poker games in L.A. Her clients included movie stars, producers, professional athletes, and other very wealthy people.

Some twist and turns occur and she ends up moving her operation to New York where she does the same thing. I was unaware of this, or even if it still true, but what she was doing isn't actually illegal. However, she accidentally gets mixed up with the wrong people, gathers the attention of the Russian mob and things start turning bad for her.

By her accidental association with the mob she also ends up getting indicted in connection to a RICO case. If you are not familiar with what this means it basically is something that was set up to fight mafias in the USA and it is not the kind of lawsuit you want to get wrapped up in because a lot of rights that a person would normally have when facing trial are eliminated. It's actually a pretty interesting topic and I am not doing it justice (no pun intended) in the description I have just provided.

Molly's game kind of drags in the middle, as though they were trying to come up with a way to make the film an hour and a half long. But stick with it, because it is actually a great story.

Kevin Costner is in it (and am I alone in saying I really like Kevin Costner?) but i think they are actually a little deceptive in putting his name so high up on the movie poster because he is only in the movie for about 8 minutes.

Here's the trailer

The film did reasonably well gathering just over 50 million bucks. The critical response was mostly good and overall I would say that my review is going to be a little biassed since I prefer true stories. Overall, i give this one a 7.5 / 10.