The World Falls in Love With Poker Princess Molly Bloom

The Oscar-winning Hollywood blockbuster ‘Molly’s Game’ is continuing to wow audiences and critics alike, and if you wondered just why you found Jessica Chastain’s characterisation of underground poker ‘queenpin’ Molly Bloom so enthralling and likeable, here’s your answer.

The portrayal of the former Olympic skier-turned waitress-turned millionaire poker fixer to the biggest stars of Hollywood and Wall Street has brought poker into the mainstream once again, but it was director Aaron Sorkin who ensured that audiences would relate to the ‘poker princess’.

"Bloom is presented here as an instinctive and quick learner, driven by killer ambition to show up the relatively underwhelming men in her life, even as she refuses to sell out their secrets to prosecutors."

So says Ptleader.com’s Kirk Boxleitner, dissecting the roles of Bloom, Sorkin and actress Chastain to find out what’s behind the incredible representation of a tale which had everything: riches to rags to riches again, Hollywood royalty, sports stars, business titans, the Russian mob – and finally the FBI!

Boxleitner describes the movie as:

“An odd hybrid, one part step-by-step process narrative on how to establish your own loyal room of high-roller poker players” while at the same time seeing much she can “retain her ethical principles when faced with the prospect of losing all her money and being sent to prison.”

Chastain, who turned 34 this week, "is settling into an effortless groove of playing professional women who hold their own against powerful men” – a main theme of the film which has already outstripped most other poker movies, pulling in $53million in a few short months.

Sorkin’s take on Bloom’s epic story works in “a few appropriate digs at the system that exploited Bloom” the critic says, adding:

“He does this through stirring speeches delivered pitch-perfectly by Idris Elba as Charlie Jaffey, a fictional character based on Bloom’s real-life lawyer, who takes her case in the film because he shares her impeccable integrity.”

Whether people would are quite so taken by Bloom’s remarkable story in real-life is less clear, but poker itself may well be the biggest beneficiary of how she comes across on the big screen…