Film Review: American Hustle
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American Hustle is one of those films you can enjoy in the moment and the second you leave the theater and think about it, the flaws start to become really apparent. This is not to say that American Hustle is a bad movie, it’s pretty good actually, just that it doesn’t live up to the many parts that make up the whole.
The movie starts off with a title card that mentions that some of the events in the film happened and then plunges us into a crazy story. A con man (Chrisitan Bale) and his partner (Amy Adams) are giving people fake loans and living life until they’re caught by a FBI agent (Bradley Cooper). He recruits them into a plan to get white-collar criminals which ends up aiming to take down politicians like Mayor Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner) and a mafia kingpin.
The major problem with this film is the script. Though it’s funny and crafts some engaging characters, it’s too unsettled to really make an impact. The narrative is fractured for some odd reason, moving between the past and the present in the first half of the film without any real regard for why. This sort of disregard bleeds into the overall tone and themes, which I found really hard to decipher. Was this supposed to be a morality tale or not? The movie sent so many mixed messages with what it wanted the audience to come away with. On the one hand, the film shows a man like Mayor Polito trying to do good for his community, but engaging in illegal activity and getting slammed for it, then it shows people who engage in illegal activity getting away with it and framing an officer of the law to do it. So which one am I supposed to take with me as the situation the film finds desirable? That’s quite a conundrum for a film to have.
David O. Russell is a kinetic filmmaker and he certainly makes the film visually engaging. The camera is never just static, always feeling like it’s a character itself. That definitely helps bring an immediacy to the film and a vibrancy to the performances. Unfortunately, O. Russell gets a little too showy and into the film than he probably should have. It’s one thing for the camera to be a character, and quite another for the audience to see your filmmaking techniques as the movie progresses. I can’t tell you the amount of zoom ins this movie employs to try to get its point across, but needless to say, its jarring when you can pinpoint the camera movement used in a shot.
The performances are what keeps a pretty average film afloat. Though every actor gets their moment, my favorite performance in the film is probably Christian Bale. Though he is under some truly terrible hair and a pot belly, his grounded, yet showy performance stands out because of his sensitivity. Bale has always been an intense actor, and he’s certainly in tune here, but it’s dialed back a few notches, shaded with exasperation and will to live.
He’s partnered with two very game women, in Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence. Adams finds the most interesting ways to use her golden girl vulnerability, yet undeniable sexual energy to breathe life into her part. There are multiple accents, crying, walking around with fabulous hair, she handles them all with ease. Lawrence storms into the film and almost walks away with it, despite playing a character that is about 10 years older than her. She’s a firecracker yet vulnerable. The best part of her performance is that though she isn’t the brightest tool in the shed, she doesn’t play up the bimbo angle, which allows us to relish when she has some agency in the tale.
Bradley Cooper and Jeremy Renner round out the main ensemble. Cooper gets many of the funniest moments in the film and given his character’s ever shifting moods, he’s definitely the showiest part aside from Lawrence. Renner, the part of the film most people will forget, is quite sensational as the mayor who gets dragged into this circus. Easily the most sympathetic character, his character is one who is trying to do more good than harm, and truly is a man of the people who just gets caught up.
I mean I’m certainly admire what American Hustle was trying to do, but what it actually did was underwhelmed me just enough to keep me from really liking the film.
Grade: **1/2/**** (C+)
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