I found this solid overall like Sorkin's other two films at the helm, but it's handedly his weakest due to the long and tiring third act moralism and actually(?!) sincerely-directed summation of Bloom's psychology in easily the worst scene Sorkin has written or directed ever.. it's already been mentioned elsewhere, but holy shit; I really cannot believe that lines like "Congratulations, you've just completed a year of therapy!" are committed to with only one part comic wince and nine parts earnestness- as cemented by the even worse "Congratulations, you've just completed your second year of therapy!" after talking back to her dad.
Anyways, the first half of Molly's ceiling-moving rise is exciting, and yes, cheekily much more interesting than a poker hand. Its Goodfellas-aping is worn on its sleeves like most of these seamlessly-edited biopics, but it works, with rotating players coming in and out and distracting from Molly's relatively-empty vessel, to validate domino's critique. The narrative operated with interest when it played its hand open to the eyes of Molly's observer (like.. an audience member's voyeuristic position) rather than center around her case as a focal point, which was essentially her life: watching all corners of the backroom principals, who would be leads in their own poker movies but are colorful cameos here from her and our perspectives. We wouldn't necessarily be interesting characters for two and a half hours though.
The film's bifurcated structure works when oscillating back and forth in the early parts because the Idris Elba "current" sections are populated with Sorkin's only amusingly acidic bits of dialog in the film (and even these are way toned-down from the possibilities he's reached before and since), but then in the back half the verbage drones into exhausting self-seriousness, as if Bloom herself needed to sign off on the final cut. I'm glad Sorkin found a way to make law office interplay exciting in time for his next film, ironically by forfeiting the solemnness and transparently leaning into the playful nature of cinematic artifice. I mean, even the score over the credits is so gravely operatic, it makes me feel like I fell asleep midway through and missed the end credits to the movie that I was watching for the first hour!
I realize this doesn't sound like I liked it, and maybe I didn't. Maybe after a third year of Costner Therapy, I'll work through my feelings on liking half a movie and disliking its second half and become more comfortable with recommending it followed by several paragraphs of asterisks (wait, if ten seconds = one year, that timeline elapsed by the time that scene ended, and I'm pretty sure I just did that exact thing). Okay, so I guess you could watch the first part and play some computer games during the second, half-paying attention if you want? I don't know. I'm going to eat a bag of candy and watch Mulholland Dr. to cleanse myself. I still liked it overall though. I think. Whad'ya got for me, Costner?