Film Review - Miss Sloane (15)

You're a piece of work, Elizabeth.

Zero Dark Thirty. Interstellar. The Martian. You want steely determination, Jessica Chastain is your woman. And as the Elizabeth Sloane of this film's title she has never been more single-minded - to the point of ruthlessness. Take the film's opening moments, when Miss Sloane is being grilled by her own lawyer in preparation for a congressional hearing that may break her. The camera lingers on Chastain's icy features, as if trying to make her flinch. Not a prayer. Not yet. The screws will really have to turn in this taut political drama before her cool exterior even threatens to crack. 

Sloane, you see, is that 21st century political animal - a lobbyist for hire in Washington DC, who's paid to influence America's legislators in their decisions. She's also highly successful due to her cunning, foresight and willingness to trample over opponents and allies alike in pursuit of her professional goals. A woman to admire from a distance, but never to tangle with. The fight of her career comes when a small lobbying firm attempts to steal her services; they want her to lead the charge to have a bill passed tightening background checks on US gun ownership. Fired more by the challenge than by any ethical considerations, she agrees to take it on.

And so the scene is set for an old-fashioned David/Goliath story, that's if David were a pill-popping borderline sociopath with no discernible moral boundaries. 

Miss Sloane is a slick and compelling piece of entertainment, driven chiefly by Chastain's power-dressed central performance. Yes she can be endearingly vulnerable elsewhere (see her in The Help), but here she's a study in severity, admirable and appalling in equal measure - pushing the audience's sympathy to breaking point. She's backed up by a smart supporting cast including the ever-dependable Mark Strong as her wary new boss, Gugu Mbatha-Raw as a colleague with an emotional stake in the gun control issue and Alison Pill as the trainee lobbyist she left behind when jumping ship. It's to the film's credit that women are shown to have agency throughout, in the traditionally masculine environment of Washington.

John Madden (Shakespeare in Love) directs with a steady hand, but the movie's other great strength is its script. Unusually for a Hollywood film only one writer is credited - Jonathan Perera with his first ever screenplay. Reminiscent of The West Wing it's sharp in both wit and intelligence, giving the cast plenty to chew on and trusting the audience to keep up. I've bewailed some below-par screen writing here of recent weeks - well here's an example of how to do it properly, kudos to Perera. And if the latter section of the film sets off too big a dramatic fireworks display, it's forgivable. 

Miss Sloane as played by Chastain, you see, deserves room to breathe as a character. It's why this very good piece of cinema might make even better television. She and the other lobbyists, on both sides of the issue, are much too complex and fascinating to be summed up in two hours of screen time. On the small screen subtlety need never be sacrificed for explosive denouements. But that's a whole other issue, all to do with the new Golden Age of TV. 

For now enough to say that Miss Sloane is a fine political thriller for the big screen, driven by that central powerhouse performance. See it and relish every duplicitous moment.

Ed's Verdict: The plot twists get outlandish, but Jessica Chastain rocks it to the end.