After decades as one of Hollywood’s most well-known and distinctive screenwriters, Aaron Sorkin has stepped behind the camera for the first time with this, his directorial debut, chronicling the real-life rise and fall of Molly Bloom – the young woman who rose to run the highest stakes poker games in the world.

We first meet Molly (Jessica Chastain) back when she was an Olympic-level skier, at the qualifying rounds, where a misplaced twig trips her up and costs her her career. Following this, and with a bachelor’s degree already under her belt, she heads to L.A. deciding to take a year off before going to law school. With her parents disapproving and her cut off from their funds, she takes up multiple jobs, one as an assistant to a man who gets her involved in running his weekly celebrity poker game. From these beginnings, Molly builds an empire, working up to running the highest class poker games, with buy-ins of $250,000. However, she soon inadvertently becomes involved with the wrong people and, after years of being careful, breaks the law. She subsequently faces an FBI investigation and court case, as well as further personal consequences.

The way Sorkin chooses to frame the story is very interesting. The narrative constantly flits between Molly’s conversations with a lawyer (Idris Elba), and flashbacks to her childhood (controlled by her commanding father, played by Kevin Costner) and journey into the poker world. This allows our understanding of Molly to increase as the investigation progresses, gradually stripping back the image of who she is, and revealing the real person. She objects to the papers’ title of her as a ‘poker princess’, dismissing the term as derogatory and degrading of the hard work she put in. She is an incredibly interesting person, and a strong woman to see on screen. She is incredibly smart and focused, working hard to understand what she needs to do, and then putting her plans in action with practically no assistance. She is also a character of genuine moral integrity, something you wouldn’t necessarily expect, able to self-assess and maintain a level-headedness, not jumping at the easy way out. She holds an unexpected sense of loyalty to those who played in her game, choosing to put them before herself, indicating her to be much more than someone who desires money.

It also becomes apparent that she taught herself everything about poker, knowing nothing before her first time assisting her boss, and built up her games using her wits and intelligence alone. The extra challenge she faces is having to navigate a world almost solely populated by men. She has to ward of advances, and is initially told she needed to look more glamorous. She is a woman in a man’s world, but she retains control, steeling herself against those who hit on her, and offering more compassion to those she sees losing masses of money in the game. It is sadly rare to see a woman like her on the screen.

Molly is brilliantly portrayed by a terrific Chastain. She loses herself in the character and relishes Sorkin’s whip-smart dialogue, delivering restrained emotion and character in spades. Her scenes with a fantastic Elba in particular crackle as they exchange snappy retorts in dialogue that often overlaps, creating even more energy. Costner is excellent, too, as Molly’s father, never descending into a one-note stereotype of the over-bearing parent, instead cultivating a more authentic relationship with Molly which pays off in an emotional final moment between the pair.

Sorkin himself proves an energetic and interesting director, his film pulsates with a sense of electricity (especially in the first half) and keeps up a pace that makes it quite riveting. Of course his script provides smart and snappy dialogue which he chooses to stage more as face to face stand-offs between characters, as opposed to any walk-and-talks other directors have chosen to set his words to. He also proves to be quite a visual director. Accompanying Molly’s voice-overs are snappy, quick cuts, and, near the beginning, a multitude of footage from various sources, all inserted together to create an overall picture and get a rhythm going.

It isn’t a perfect film and its pace may falter a little in the second half, but this is an engaging and immensely entertaining biopic with a well-told and very interesting story that doesn’t forget about the person behind it. Despite the story being worlds away for some (possibly making it a little harder to relate to Molly), it taps into some timely themes, and boasts an enigmatic performance from Chastain that ensures you will keep your eyes on the screen.