American Hustle (***½)
Directed
by: David O. Russell
Starring:
Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Jennifer Lawrence,
Louis C.K., Jack Huston, Saïd Taghmaoui, Michael Peña, Shea Whigham, Alessandro
Nivola
Seen:
March 8th 2014
***½
Out of ****
Watching
American Hustle is like being transported to the 70’s, and even though I didn’t
live back then, I believe this movie comes really close to creating a realistic
and excellently entertaining 70’s. From hairstyles to wardrobes, everything in
this movie is simply stunningly realised. David O. Russell manages to get great
performances out of every single actor in this movie, with a great diversity of
personalities being created in a package where the only shortfall is that the
story, however engaging and humorously entertaining, is not entirely a
life-changer or all that original.
It’s
the late 70’s and con-man Irving Rosenfeld (Bale) is making a small fortune
with the few businesses he owns. There are legitimate ones, like his dry
cleaning shop, but then there are the ones that sell fake art at not-so-fake
prices. His wife Rosalyn (Lawrence) is mostly at home with her son Danny, whom
Irving has grown to love. The two cannot bear each other though, and Irving is
only staying with her to keep an eye over Danny, as Rosalyn has become a bit of
an unhinged alcoholic. When Irving meets Sydney Prosser (Adams), the two
immediately hit it off and they start doing “business” together and they fall
for each other. Before long they run a successful loan scam, but they are
caught red-handed by FBI Agent Richie DiMaso (Cooper), who offers them a deal:
if they can get him four more arrests, he will let them go.
In
the process of starting to line up possible targets to get DiMaso his arrests,
the team escalates the stakes and they even get a Mayor in their crosshairs,
Carmine Polito (Renner) from Camden, New Jersey. Irving and Sydney are a good
team and together they make DiMaso an offer he can’t refuse and DiMaso
ambitiously takes on the long con to trap bigger fish in his entrapment net. Soon
enough it’s everyone for himself, and the movie manages to only reveal the full
plot relatively late in proceedings, with the added unbelievable element being
that this all sort of really happened – fiction sometimes truly doesn’t come
close to real life.
Christian
Bale went through a staggering transformation for this movie, continuing his
long streak of metamorphosis for his movies. This time he is overweight with a
ridiculous potbelly and a terrible comb-over and it works, as his character simply
has bucket-loads of charisma to carry you through it. Bradley Cooper and Jeremy
Renner both bring the old school hairstyles and they rock it as they deliver an
idealistic FBI Agent and an idealistic politician respectively. Amy Adams is
beautiful as the demanding and driven mistress while Jennifer Lawrence is
beautifully forlorn as the wronged wife.
American
hustle is a clever and fun movie that will entertain most viewers and it will even,
for a few moments at least, give you a good dose of 70’s nostalgia. David O.
Russell has once again proved his capability as a great filmmaker, and I look
towards his next effort with anticipation.
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