Miss Sloane

Dir: John Madden

2016

****

Jessica Chastain starred in two films that were released a month apart from each other. The most recent of the pair was Molly’s Game, released on 5th January 2017 and the first was Miss Sloane, released on 9th December 2016. Both made losses at the box office but both are excellent dramas with Chastain giving two phenomenal performances. I can only conclude that people like to watch blockbusters in December and are too brassic to go to the cinema in January. I hope that I’m right and people didn’t go to see them because they were deemed too highbrow or boring but I do wonder about current audiences. That said, my local cinema didn’t show it even though it shows kid’s Christmas films well into March. I really hope the poor attendance wasn’t because everyone is a gun nut. The state of things. I digress. I didn’t actually go and see the film because it was directed by John Madden because until now I haven’t been much of a fan of his work. This is by far the most compelling film of his career so far. Miss Elizabeth Sloane (Jessica Chastain) is a cutthroat lobbyist who, in the first scene, has been called to appear at a congressional hearing led by Senator Ronald Sperling (John Lithgow) to answer questions about possible violations of Senate ethics rules during her tenure at Washington D.C. lobbying firm Cole Kravitz & Waterman. Rewind three months earlier and we see Sloane's firm is approached by gun manufacturing representative Bill Sanford (Chuck Shamata) to lead the opposition to the proposed Heaton-Harris bill that would expand background checks on gun purchases, specifically by targeting female voters. Sloane ridicules Sanford's idea and is later approached by Rodolfo Schmidt (Mark Strong), the head of rival lobbying firm Peterson Wyatt, to instead lead the effort in support of the bill. Sloane agrees and takes most of her staff along with her, though her assistant Jane Molloy (Alison Pill) refuses to leave. At Peterson Wyatt, Sloane selects Esme Manucharian (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) to conduct the majority of the firm's media appearances, and they begin to make significant progress in garnering votes for the bill. Sloane confronts Esme with knowledge of her background as having witnessed a school shooting. Even though Esme does not want to disclose the information, Sloane reveals Esme's secret during a live television debate. Later, Esme is held up at gunpoint while leaving her office, but her attacker is shot dead by another civilian who is legally carrying a gun. Gun rights supporters capitalize on this event, which causes the Heaton-Harris bill to lose support in the Senate which I personally found rather odd. Surely the man who held up Esme should have been better checked, making a stronger case for the Heaton-Harris bill? It bothered me for a few minutes until I realised that actually, the world we live in is this stupid, so it is actually closer to the truth than I had first thought. The narrative returns to the congressional hearing. Senator Sperling produces a form requesting approval of overseas travel for a senator. It was filed by a non-profit organization but completed in Sloane's handwriting, indicating she illegally played a role in arranging the travel. Sloane also swears under oath that she has never practiced illegal wiretapping. In her final statement at the hearing, Sloane admits she anticipated the opposition might attack her personally if Peterson Wyatt made too much progress with the Heaton-Harris bill. She reveals that she had someone (Jane Molley) secretly working for her the entire time and had Senator Sperling surveilled and she had him recorded in his parked car accepting bribes in from Cole Kravitz & Waterman boss George Dupont (Sam Waterston). Ten months later, Sloane is visited by her lawyer in prison, and it is revealed the Heaton-Harris bill passed but at the cost of her career. The film ends with Sloane being released from prison. I do like a good political thriller and Miss Sloane is a good political thriller. It is safe to say though that the film rests on Jessica Chastain’s stand out performance. Steven Spielberg was said to be interested in the script – that was at one point on the infamous black list – but he wouldn’t have been available to make it for another few years. It’s a shame, because with his gravitas it might have been the box office smash it should have been. I feel it raises a very important issue, one that everyone should have taken notice of, but now seems lost in the distant memory of 2016.