Among Many Things, My Black Ass Needed to Watch ‘Molly’s Game’ to See If I Could Root for Her

From Rounders to 21, movies about high-stakes card playing have become a sub-genre all their own. Despite having a wide range of quality, the overall goal of these films is to warn against a lifestyle of vice. Molly’s Game joins the rank of such cautionary tales that inevitably punish their leads for what seems to come inherently to any level of success in card games—gambling addiction that ruins relationships, drug dependency, and rock bottom—only for a miraculous resolution in the end. Aaron Sorkin’s directorial debut plays in the same vein. The film is based on the true story of Molly Bloom’s rise, not by playing cards, but running her games in exclusive, mostly-legal poker nights. That’s where Molly’s Game twists from the standard poker story. However, the results, to a significant degree, remain. To invest in Molly Bloom as a character is to feel for her despite the challenge of her obvious privilege. Indeed, Molly’s is a rags-to-riches story that exchanges the rags for an unhealthy relationship with her family, particularly her father. The film lures your empathy to a tragic skiing injury that ruined her professional skiing career, taking her from promising Olympic hopeful to a girl in need of spine surgery who ends up with a loss of purpose and identity. Confronted with a fork in the road, Molly delays law school in favor of a part-time job as an assistant also organizing her abusive boss’ weekly poker game. She eventually turn this into a small empire.

In case the sk…