Molly's Game: The True Story of Molly Bloom

Anyone involved in gambling will probably have heard at least once of Molly Bloom , the beautiful American businesswoman who has dedicated her professional life to gambling, from which she first drew enormous income and then a series of problems with the law that brought her up to prison. The story of Molly Bloom 's success begins in the famous night club The Viper Room , where the girl works as a waitress: after managing the poker games that were held clandestinely inside the club for a short time, Molly decides to start her own business and becomes the premier organizer of poker tournaments in Los Angeles.

Her events are attended by jet set personalities such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Macaulay Culkin, Matt Damon, Tobey Maguire and Ben Affleck, the millions begin to turn in the pockets of the entrepreneur and the police begin to monitor her activity. Trouble begins in 2010, when Molly receives her first fine for tax evasion ; from this moment her life becomes a succession of allegations of fraud, money laundering, extortion and illegal gambling, until her conviction in 2013. The woman manages to avoid prison by agreeing to spend a year on probation and to carry out 200 hours of civil service.

In 2017, the exciting story of Molly Bloom was brought to the big screen by US director Aaron Sorkin, who with his “ Molly's Game ” earned an Oscar nomination and two Golden Globe nominations. The protagonist of the film is Jessica Chastain , who plays Molly Bloom retracing the exploits narrated in her autobiography, entitled "Molly's Game: From Hollywood's Elite to Wall Street's Billionaire Boys Club, My High-Stakes Adventure in the World of Underground Poker". Despite the excellent performance of the lead actress (who spent a lot of time with the real Molly Bloom to get into her character) and the moderate critical success that brought the film to the attention of international audiences, at the box officeMolly's Game did not get the desired results, with only 60 million dollars collected compared to 30 spent on filming. After all, even cinema can be considered a form of gambling .

As often happens when cinema offers a true story on the screen, not all the facts told by the director correspond to episodes that actually happened. In particular, a discrepancy emerges between the film and the autobiography concerning the reason why the so-called "princess of poker" abandoned her promising career as a sportswoman to take up the path of gambling: it was not a tragic accident to break Molly Bloom's Olympic dream, as suggested by Aaron Sorkin in his film, but rather a conscious choice determined by the greater possibilities offered by the world of gambling. The cinematographic choice to introduce a fictitious character such as " Player X " is appreciable”, embodiment of various types of player encountered by Molly Bloom during his career.