Miss Sloane

A how-the-sausage-is-made film about the US lobbying industry, looking behind how political pressure is created and applied on hot-button issues, this is reasonably fascinating. If it ultimately ends up playing a bit more for drama than it does for reality (the final senate-hearing speech sounds like the kinda thing that would have been shut down in the first ten seconds), this is still pretty darn gripping stuff with thrills, secrets  and surprises aplenty. 

Jessica Chastain holds the centre of this film stuningly as the emotionally-controlled Sloane. There's a good bunch of supporting women (in particular Gugu Mbantha-Raw, Alison Pill and in one effective scene, Christine Baranski) and, as is inevitable in a film about US politics, some creepy old white men (Sam Waterston and John Lithgow) but the beating heart of the film is Sloane as she maneuvers, for once fighting for a cause that's important (Gun Control). For whatever reason, this didn't catch alight either at awards season or as a pulpy thriller, but to my mind this has pulpy pleasures galore and thoroughly intrigued me til the end.