Jessica “I’m the motherfucker that found this place” Chastain plays Miss Sloane, the titular lobbyist who decides to leave a well-established, lavishly funded DC lobbyist firm for a scrappy nonprofit underdog that is trying to pass legislation for gun control. Will she get the bill passed and at what cost?
Miss Sloane is a hella problematic movie, but it was highly entertaining, and the protagonist was badass so while I may not sign a waiver, I highly recommend that you stream it on Amazon Prime. It improves with repeat viewings once you know what is coming without ruining an initial reading of the movie. The film wants to do a lot of things and executes them well, but the problematic portions are the assumptions inherent in the story. If you can stomach them, then you will enjoy this movie too.
Miss Sloane is several movies in one. Primarily it is a character study about an ambitious, unapologetic, badass woman. The respectable veneer is gun control, which allows the plot to provide clever talking points, ridicule traditional proponents for not being ruthless enough and get the joy of visualizing what it would look like if a person willing to play dirty was on our side. It is also a mover shaker movie where it is a battle of the wills to see which team will win. It is reminiscent to Scandal that a good portion of the film depicts how she creates and mashes up her team, puts pieces into place and is a puppet master. The viewer feels as if they are sneaking a peak at a secret, hidden world. Because the protagonist is a woman, the ambitious woman must still be taken down a peg. How do you make humble her into being a woman again AND win? Unlike Richard Gere in Arbitrage or Matthew McCounaghey, a slick woman protagonist cannot get out of it unscathed.
Miss Sloane is obsessed with people pointing out how masculine she is even her allies. She does not have feelings. Her thinking is warped because she is so calculating. When we first meet her, she is technically standing in the bathroom stall. She does not soften her delivery or care about someone’s feelings when making work decisions. She tells dirty jokes. Her sexual habits are depicted as something normally considered male. I enjoyed finally seeing a woman character as perspicaciously relentless and cold as men are usually depicted in circles of power, but even her allies constantly exhibit horror and disgust at her behavior. Does that happen in movies with men who conduct themselves similarly? We usually love a magnificent bastard.
Miss Sloane was released after 2016 Presidential election and did not do well at the box office probably because one of its leading assumptions is that women are a monolith of solidarity, oppose the gun lobby and care more about their children than the men that they are trying to get to pick them. Fifty-two percent of white women said absolutely not to that premise. The movie exploits our assumptions about the Queen Bee syndrome in which two women are pitted against each other in a “there can only be one” Highlander scenario that is prevalent in workplaces fraught with inequality.
I despise when films use hearings to basically adjudicate a person’s character and vindicate her and her cause in a way that utterly does not resemble real life. Miss Sloane does it in a satisfying, unashamedly dramatic way, but it is still absurd. Also after you have seen the film and consider that she has spent the whole movie trying to do one thing, the hearing actually works against it by potentially jeopardizing seven votes. It does make sense if you want her to stick it to the villain, not the gun lobby, but the lobbyist without a conscience headed by Law and Order’s Sam Waterston, who plays George Dupont, a man who is openly racist and the only one who succeeds at briefly shaking Sloane’s usual unflappable demeanor. They are pitted against each other, but unlike her, has numerous underlings to fight his battle for him whereas she is the lead and most memorable gladiator.
Miss Sloane’s real story is about a lobbyist/patriot with a conscience. It is no different in substance from an action movie when a bloodthirsty assassin decides to use her skills to fight for the target even though she will hurt herself in the process. She can no longer rationalize that in her current position she is changing the world from the inside and is willing to do anything to do so. I actually loved how the script never made the same mistakes as Molly’s Game in explaining her motivations in painful detail, but Chastain manages to fill in the emotional holes and imply a lot. I would have liked to know the backstory, but it probably would have seemed trite. My guess: she was raised in an abusive home, and her mother was shot. I do not think that the drugs were just about keeping up at work, but the trauma of not wanting to sleep at night as if she was living the realistic version of A Nightmare on Elm Street and had to stay awake. Also the fact that she did not mind being in control of so many people and projects, but stalwartly refusing to drive is less about her abilities as a driver, but a fear of endangering people. The only time that she expresses any remorse is when she inadvertently does. She draws the line at physical harm.
I gleaned a lot of this information from scenes between Chastain and Jake Lacy, who plays Forde, an escort. The first time that I saw Miss Sloane over a year ago, I actually despised the hooker with a heart of gold trope and thought that the movie was just going for a romantic angle, which it was, but it was not. The Forde scenes are the only ones in which she shows emotions and reveals her personal history. They are her most human moments when she is not secretly conniving. While I no longer hate those scenes and think that Lacy did the best that he could do with what he was given (most underrated American actor), I am uncertain if it was the best way to accomplish showing her humanity considering the entire story arc.
In spite of its considerable flaws, overall Miss Sloane’s narrative works as it toggles back and forth from the hearings to the bad deed which sparked the hearing until we reach the present. I would not be surprised if this film inspired Sorkin’s Molly’s Game except he was too heavy handed. The lawyer client relationship was terrific and was the only character that made sense to constantly express disapproval. Though brief, his story arc was satisfying because he is the everyman that the viewer can relate to if the viewer is unlike me and a bit horrified at her machinations.
Miss Sloane has a great ensemble cast, including Gugu Mbatha-Raw in a standout role and my personal fave Michael Stuhlbarg. There are a lot of recognizable, excellent primarily appear in television series actors among such cinematic staples as Mark Strong playing against type. If you are a fan of anyone in the cast, it is a sufficient reason to watch.
