‘Molly’s Game’ Film Review: Jessica Chastain’s Poker Face Folds to an Overplayed Script

Here’s a recommendation I never thought I’d issue as a film critic: Consider watching just the first half of the overachievement-gone-awry biopic “Molly’s Game.” The initial hour of Aaron Sorkin’s directorial debut is fizzy, smart, exhilarating fun; it would’ve made a fantastically promising TV pilot.

“Molly’s Game” opens with a sensational skiing segment, at the bone-crunching end of which tiger-fathered Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain), then an Olympic hopeful, has to become the best at something not sports-related. Putting off law school, Molly stumbles into the poker underworld, where, for a little while at least, she becomes the biggest game runner in the world.