Flat poker scenes

First for me, watching slow games like poker and golf is not my cuppa, but I will concede these games can be compelling to watch if I know the stakes from start to finish. However here we are given random snippets of games with Molly’s smug voice narrating the lead ins. I tried to grasp the suspense and tension driving the poker scenes but it wasn’t there. The Harlan loss scene was the only remotely interesting one. There was too much focus on Molly setting up food and tallying up at the end of the night and not on the players, who were central to her rise and fall. The overuse of Chastain, who is great in other films, as a narrator doesn’t work here. I can read the book myself, but I go to film to see drama played out, not narrated to me. I am a fan of Elba too, but he mumbled his lines too often. The Daddy reconciliation scene, mawkishly staged by the ice rink no less, was clumsy and flat. Sorkin could have just flashed a flow chart of psychoanalysis and it would have had the same effect. I am a fan of Sorkin’s The Social Network, The Big Short, The Newsroom, but this one not so much.