A political thriller of the highest caliber, Miss Sloane sears across the screen and into our eyeballs with ferocious wit and impeccable style. It is also in some ways the essence of why this Oscar season doesn't feel like an Oscar season.
Look at the recent releases in cinemas. Sure, big blockbusters can be more common as we leave summer and approach the holidays, but we've seen a surprising lack of real awards season contenders since October. Besides Arrival and Moonlight, can you even think of a real major Best Picture candidate? The last I would have guessed might have been Hell or High Water, but that was released almost half a year ago. I know we still have some major films coming up from Scorsese and Chazelle, among others, but it seems like this year's race is a last-minute hustle.
In Miss Sloane, we have a fierce screenplay that fizzles out at the end. We have a superstar performance from a leading woman that is ultimately overshadowed by unfocused direction. We have storytelling that is anything but original in design. Sound like other films we've been seeing all year? I don't want to get down on this particular movie, because it really is fabulous. But my anxieties have peaked with the looming of Golden Globe nominations tomorrow morning, and so I'm finally expressing my frustration at the lack of gold-worthy pictures this year.
That said, I loved this movie. I love political thrillers, courtroom dramas, feminist icons, high style, and sassy scripts, and this has all that and then some, and it's all here. Our titular hero is a lobbyist, formidable and vicious, famed and hated for her cunning and dubious means of achieving success (Does this sound timely to you??). Despite her gray-area ethics and debatable methods, Sloane cuts away the crap, reveling in her own sense of purpose and skill and thriving as she mows down her opponents. I felt invigorated and inspired as I watched her, but I would not be surprised if others felt alienated and even threatened by her (much like what people feel when they watch Frank Underwood do his thang on House of Cards). Jessica Chastain delivers a knockout performance in stunning costume, riding a tidal wave of seething emotion with grace and restraint. I'd argue that she is the only thing that keeps the film from a great big flop into obscurity.
While her performance is more than worth the viewing, the rest of the film suffers from less-inspired delivery. Perhaps it's our age of instant news and publicly shamed politics, perhaps it's the incessant white noise of crime procedurals and legal thrillers on television, but almost nothing about the story here feels urgent enough to deserve a feature-length production. It's like an episode of Damages or Scandal stretched over two hours' time with little melodramatic payoff and even less bloodshed. That doesn't mean the dialogue isn't heightened and sharp, even gasp-inducingly clever, it just means it all feels a little stale. And don't even get me started on the conceptually fabulous yet terribly executed ending. Thankfully, John Lithgow presides over the mess to keep things interesting.
So. Award-worthy? Maybe for Miss Chastain, but nobody else. Then again, who else really deserves an award anyway?
IMDb: Miss Sloane
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