Review: Miss Sloane

"Lobbying is about foresight," states the steely-eyed, hard-jawed title character of the engrossing political drama, Miss Sloane. "Anticipating your opponent's moves and advising counter-measures. It's about making sure you surprise them and they don't surprise you." It's abundantly clear from the film's opening moments and from Jessica Chastain's electrifying performance that Elizabeth Sloane is a formidable figure, one who would get her job done at any cost.

Miss Sloane, which can be viewed as a female Michael Clayton, immerses audiences into the Washington D.C. lobbying scene, where blackmail, backstabbing and corruption are part of the everyday. Sloane is a wheeler-dealer extraordinaire at the consulting firm of Cole, Kravitz & Waterman, where she and her colleagues blithely and expertly sidestep the laws of how lobbyists should operate. Having recently advocated for reducing taxes on importing palm oil for Indonesia and arranging for a senator to take a "research trip" to the island nation, Sloane is called upon by a the head of a powerful gun lobby to drum up female support for a bill that would call for the reduction of universal background checks, she cackles in his face, "Is this the reputation I've garnered - gold medalist in ethical limbo?" When her boss (Sam Waterston) furiously castigates her, she decides to quit, take her team of young charges, and work for the opposing team, reasoning, "I work on behalf of causes I believe in."

Yet her boss knows as well as she does that the only cause Sloane believes in is winning. Her new boss, the old-fashioned idealist Rodolfo Schmidt (Mark Strong), and, in particular, one of her new colleagues, Esme Manucharian (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), soon witness the extent of Sloane's obsession with winning. For Sloane, everything and everyone is a potential resource to get the desired end result. Allies are manipulated and thrown under the bus with the same breathtaking disregard as her enemies. There isn't one line that Sloane would hesitate to cross. As she herself admits when she's taken things too far, "I never know where the line is."

To screenwriter Jonathan Perera's credit, very little is offered to elucidate what makes Sloane the way she is. She has no personal stakes in the causes she supports, nor does she seemingly have any childhood experiences that drive her ambitions. She is simply a complex, powerful, intensely driven, uncompromising, sometimes vulnerable woman who has little to no time for family, friends, or any other sort of personal relationship. The one semblance of a relationship she has is the purely transactional one she maintains with Forde (Jake Lacy), the male escort she hires for intimacy-free sex. Chastain is nothing less than outstanding, a terrifying whirlwind that bulldozes over everyone in her path with her fierce intelligence and ferocious focus. She refuses all attempts to mine audience's sympathy even when Perera's screenplay tips the character into redemption mode. One may not like Sloane, but one has to admire her.

Director John Madden perhaps takes too many visual cues from Michael Clayton - at times, the films are mirror images of one another - but he keeps the narrative lean and mean even when all the twists and turns threaten to throw the film off the rails. He's also savvy enough to keep out of Chastain's way and surround her with a sterling supporting cast, all of whom command attention in their sometimes brief moments onscreen.

Miss Sloane

Directed by: John Madden

Written by: Jonathan Perera

Starring: Jessica Chastain, John Lithgow, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jake Lacy, Mark Strong, Alison Pill, Sam Waterston, Dylan Baker, Christine Baranski