Poker is a game that has reached such a dimension nowadays that it is not only the paths of the best players that hide great stories, because the lives of all the personnel who revolve around poker are also often remarkable. and these people always have a lot to tell. The cinema is a good place to tell these stories, and films dealing with this kind of subject matter have multiplied over the last decade. Films about successful careers, about tournaments in live, online tournaments and even autobiographical films have emerged recently. But hard to find one as particular and interesting as The Great Game.
The script is inspired by real events and shows us Molly Bloom’s desperate attempt to tell her story. Although many films about poker are of high quality and could be ranked ahead of this one by specialists, Le Grand Jeu is a passionate film that describes precisely the drama experienced by a woman of this beginning. of the century and which will not know happy ending. A film of poker but also of love and enmity.
The most interesting thing about this work is to see how poker completely changed Bloom’s destiny, the one we called the “Princess of Poker”. From professional skier, she ended up concentrating on a university career in Hollywood where she oscillated between jobs as a secretary during the day and as a waitress at night to finance her studies and housing. And this until his boss asks him for help in organizing a poker game with famous people, which will change his life forever.
In the back room of a pub, Molly was responsible for inviting well-known actors, boxers, musicians or entrepreneurs to come and participate in these evenings. Games of Texas Hold’em at a table where the entry price was $10,000 and at the price involved huge sums of money were being played. The protagonist of the film decided one day to leave her boss, in order to be independent, to go and organize her own parties which she makes more luxurious than ever. The rumor of these private parties spread like wildfire, and many were the new stars to want to participate.
In truth, Molly was doing nothing different than what had been done for years in bars and gambling halls around the world. But when so much money is put on the table, certain dangers arise. When Molly finally thought her life was similar to that of the rich and famous, her business took a serious hit.
The film shows us many poker concepts, both special moves and concrete terms relating to card movements as well as the different emotions felt by the players. And above all, he insists on the concept of “fish”. They are inexperienced players who play without any sort of control over their strategy, and who are therefore easy prey for experienced players who will be able to swallow their stack chips in no time. The tokens come and go throughout the film, allowing us to realize the crazy sums of money that were played during the parties organized by Molly.
But it is of course her own story that the film is particularly interested in. Knowing why a simple sportswoman who had failed to achieve her Olympic dreams found herself involved in the world of poker and in these games between ultra-fortunate people. And in the end, Jessica Chastain, the actress playing Molly, gives us a mathematical and statistical explanation of how to win money in this type of games.
At the same time and parallel to everything strictly poker-related, we learn about the rocky relationship between Molly and her father and why most of her actions as an adult stem from her complicated childhood and her problems with her father. In addition to the action, there is therefore also in this film a whole emotional charge which is treated in a delicate although fairly predictable way. With Le Grand Jeu, the player or the person interested in poker will discover a small portion of all poker slangand movie lovers will also have a good time thanks to a very well-crafted script.
The Great Game received several Oscar, BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations the year it was released, 2017. It has also been recommended and recommended by many critics and film organizations. For some of them, Le Grand Jeu is a film like we do more because it gives a very realistic impression of what the life and setbacks of the main character, played by Jessica Chastain, were like. Molly Bloom is also part of this ever-growing circle of women who are competent in poker, those women who have managed to find a place for themselves in this traditionally very masculine world.
The Great Game is therefore a more than recommendable film which also allows us to better understand how Hollywood works from the inside and which knows how to seize the viewer to introduce him into the story. A history of poker.
