Miss Sloane * * * *

     “Fake News!” as Donald Trump would say.  But like most fake news Miss Sloane is very entertaining, even if it gets a bit confusing from time to time.

You want me to lobby
for a  damn Film Blog??

     Miss Sloane is a fictional political drama centered around a real event. Elizabeth Sloane is a professional lobbyist. She works for an organisation that has special interest groups as clients.  They hire the organisations she works for to lobby the heck out of Washington and drive home their agenda.

     The hot topic this film centres around is gun control. After switching sides she becomes an impassioned (near crazy) anti-gun lobbyist.

     She is a fascinating character. She seems to have no family (not even her parents are mentioned), definitely no partner, in fact, no close friends at all.  She hires male hookers for her sexual needs.  She works fifteen hours a day or more if necessary, she takes drugs to keep herself going and she has an impossibly fast mind, coming up with statements and ripostes that would take most of us weeks to think up, never mind nanoseconds.  Yet, she doesn’t know who Socrates was and, other than work related reports, only reads popular detective novels.

     The film commences where it ends up, with Elizabeth Sloane dragged before a Senate Committee to answer questions on bribery and corruption.  The story is then told to us in flashback.

     Jessica Chastain plays Elizabeth Sloane in a remarkable performance. A role like this could easily fall into parody, or we could become very impatient with her, but she balances it perfectly, producing a convincing character.

     The chief of the lobby organisation is played by Mark Strong doing a most convincing American accent; and the always excellent, John Lithgow cameos as a senator.

     It’s directed by John Madden, though by the style of Miss Sloane, you’d never guess it.

     It’s quite a demanding film that is very, very talky.  It is a dense script. You can’t just chill out watching this. Being dense myself  I’m pretty sure I missed 20% of the nuances but, hey, I still got a good ride. Somehow I sense a second viewing might be rewarding.

     The twist at the end is just great!