If it offers nothing else, director John Madden’s Washington lobbyist drama Miss Sloane features the kind of enigmatic, multi-layered antihero role that is rarely written for women, as well as a characteristically exceptional performance from Jessica Chastain in said role. Neither of those components are to be taken for granted, even if first-time screenwriter Jonathan Perera stumbles into facile moralizing and narrative absurdity in the film’s third act.
Miss Sloane begins with the titular white-shoe lobbyist Elizabeth Sloane prepping for a Congressional hearing into her alleged ethical breaches. The film alternates between her present-day testimony and flashbacks that reveal how this scrutiny came about. It begins when Elizabeth, although nominally a Republican, contemptuously rebuffs the gun lobby’s solicitation of her company to defeat an upcoming bill. This caches the attention of a small, progressive-minded firm headed by Rodolfo Schmidt (Mark Strong), who poaches her over to his shop to ensure that the aforementioned bill passes. This sets up the core conflict wherein the maniacally driven Elizabeth turns to ever-dirtier tactics to defeat her former superiors and associates.
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Madden is best known for helming unflashy, middlebrow crowd-pleasers, so it’s no surprise that Miss Sloane is neither a mad-as-hell anti-NRA rant nor a biting depiction of K Street’s corrosion of democracy—though it urgently wants to be the latter. It instead functions most successfully as a vehicle for Chastain’s forceful realization of a fascinating character. Elizabeth is both a walking stereotype—the childless, career-obsessed ice queen—and a riposte to that stereotype. It’s perhaps best to view the unremarkable thriller plot as an excuse to peel back the onion of her psyche, a contradictory whirl of appetite, narcissism, reticence, ruthlessness, and (yes) scruples. The rest of Miss Sloane ranges from functional to ridiculous, but Chastain’s wattage alone is almost worth the ticket.
Miss Sloane opens Friday, December 9 in wide release.
