Miss Sloane (2016) * *

Directed by:  John Madden

Starring:  Jessica Chastain, Mark Strong, Alison Pill, Sam Waterston, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Jake Lacy, John Lithgow

Washington politics is a dirty business.   Lobbyists resort to the lowest of the low to achieve their desired end.   Miss Sloane exposes the sleaze of this institution.   Don't stop the presses or pause before hitting send on your blogs and the on-line article you plan to publish.   Jessica Chastain stars as Elizabeth Sloane, a lobbyist who finds herself the subject of a Congressional inquiry into her tactics as Miss Sloane opens.   As movies are wont to do with their timelines these days, we soon are transported back to "three months earlier" and learn how Miss Sloane got to this point.

Elizabeth (who for some reason has a real first name of Madeline which she never uses, so why even saddle her with it?) works for a prestigious lobby firm which is approached by a senator looking to kill a bill which would make it more difficult to buy guns.   Perhaps this is the cynic in me, but maybe Miss Sloane is based in fantasy by suggesting it takes this much effort to kill such a bill in Congress.   If there is anything both red and blue states can agree on, it's the love of guns.   But I digress...

Miss Sloane openly flaunts her disdain for the senator and the bill and winds up working for another firm which wants to see the bill passed.   Miss Sloane has ideals after all, although they are buried under her general unscrupulousness and cold manipulation of her friends and co-workers.   Elizabeth barely sleeps and has such little time for a personal life that she hires a male gigolo (Lacy) on the regular to provide her with a few moments of rumpy-pumpy before she dismisses him and resumes her job.   The gigolo is the closest thing Elizabeth has to a friend.   Love is out of the question.

Chastain breathes as much life as she can into Elizabeth, but there isn't much in Miss Sloane which we can sink our teeth into.   The targets of the movie's venom are obvious.   The explanation by Miss Sloane as to how and why things unfold as they do is baffling.   It feels like a Big Reveal is simply thrown in for cheap effect.   Director John Madden has made some substantial films before and will again, but Miss Sloane just feels plain unnecessary.