Miss Sloane

It's about winning. At all costs. End of.

Elizabeth Sloane (Jessica Chastain) is not a team player. She knows what she wants. She knows how to get it. She doesn't do flirty. She smiles where appropriate but the eyes are cold. She pays for sex. She pops pills. She doesn't sleep.

"Were you ever normal?" her boss (Mark Strong) asks. "As a child?"

If this is a film for the 21st century don't you wish the Sixties had changed the face of human interaction.

"You crossed the line when you stopped treating people with respect."

"I never know where the line is."

There is no redemption here, only political corruption and dirty tricks. The film is long but you don't notice. It crushes your testicles and cuts off the air flow. You can't take her down. You can't take her up. She has you in her thrall and when she's done you feel splattered like a kitten in a blender.

At first you don't know what's going on. Are these bankers high on badass business practices, or a modern version of Mad Men in a crippling competitive cyber scenario? Neither, as it turns out. These are lobbyists on the hill in Washington, DC, and the stakes are high even if the ethics are not.

The case in point is gun legislation and the opposition for Sloane and her ambitious young analysts is the Second Amendment and a well funded gun lobby. The numbers are not good.

"We need 16," she is told. "They need seven."

That's senators. Or rather, their votes.

The film cuts no slack as it exposes vicious methods in this end of at all costs win win win game plan. Rarely do political shenanigans use subtlety and intelligence as weapons to woo cinema audiences without softening the blow with sweet talk or sentiment.

Finally, it is Sloane centre stage. This is her victory, her defeat, and Chastain is as sharp as a razor on the neck of compromise.