She Continues to be Our Favorite Badass Leading Lady in the New Trailer.
It seems like every way we turn, we are seeing pop culture tackle political issues. There was the abortion satire in season three of BoJack Horseman, the sexual assaults on college campuses documentary The Hunting Ground, the Amy Schumer sketch about gun control. Well, be prepared to add the political thriller Miss Sloane to the list. Directed by John Madden of Shakespeare in Love fame, the film stars Jessica Chastain as a formidable and ruthless political lobbyist who takes up the fight for new, restrictive gun control.
The trailer opens with a steely gazed Chastain speaking straight to the viewers about what lobbying actually is intercut with victories from her career and obstacles she must face. She is poised and stoic in front of everyone, but when she is alone her walls begin to crumble. There is a great moment of her silencing someone yelling at her juxtaposed with an image of her sitting on the ground on the verge of tears. It is things like this that highlight the extreme range that Chastain has and why Madden thought “the role belonged to Jessica” when he knew this film would call for an actor capable of “tremendous strength and drive on one hand and fragility and vulnerability on the other.”
All throughout her career, Chastain has proved to be one of the busiest, most versatile, and most badass actors in Hollywood. In 2011 alone, she appeared in seven completely different films. We saw her as the comical and bubbly Celia Foote in The Help, the gentle and ethereal Mrs. O’Brien in Terrance Malick’s The Tree of Life, and as cautious and confused in Jeff Nichol’s Take Shelter. We dissected every detail of her in The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby and were snapping and shouting “yas, queen” at her hunting down Osama Bin Laden in Zero Dark Thirty in 2012. And, we followed her into space in two wildly different films Interstellar and The Martian.
With Miss Sloane under her belt, Chastain looks to continue the trend of taking on roles that empower women. Madden said of the role that, “the central character might be familiar to audiences had that person been a man.” I mean, you can practically see the shade he is throwing to House of Cards and almost every other political thriller. In fact, Chastain plays a character who is not dissimilar to Frank Underwood: an unflinching person who is willing and ready to fight dirty if it means winning. The people around her are clearly both afraid and stunned at her character’s audacity.
The film’s subject matter could not be more relevant to discussions happening every single day. I am excited to see how it plays in this upcoming election season. The supporting cast includes well respected character actors like Mark Strong, Alison Pill, John Lithgow, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and Sam Waterston. Vote for Miss Sloane at a theater near you on December 9th and watch the trailer below.
Related Topics: Politics, Trailers
