Director: David O. Russell
Writers: Eric Singer, David O. Russell
Cast: Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Jeremy Renner, Louis C.K.
Runtime: 138 mins.
2013
American Hustle lives in the endlessly entertaining realm of smart cinema, breezing past clever and falling short of intelligent. It never even brushes its gaudy sleeves against profound, but the good thing is it never tries.
Our heroes are Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) and Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams), lovers and small-time con artists who get nabbed by F.B.I. agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper). They make a deal to participate in a sting that, thanks to DiMaso's wild and dangerous impulses for glory, spirals into a situation too big for our savvy con artists to handle. Irving's ditzy, manipulative wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence) is a wild card who only complicates matters. Through all of this, the characters struggle to find something real and genuine in love and friendship despite the constant subterfuge. But the plot isn't really what's important here.
Russell's direction ably guides us through the narrative. It's pretty straightforward, despite a few quirks. I never quite decided if I liked the weird tendency to pan to other parts of a character's body mid-take, like their hands, for a few seconds. But some really lovely shots stand out in my memory: Irving and Sydney standing face-to-face in the middle of a moving rack of dry cleaning made that intimate moment resonate so much more. And the first shot of the film is brilliant: a long take of Irving constructing a complex toupee/combover combination. Such craftsmanship. Much art. Wow.
But the direction isn't quite the important thing either.
The script is great. The characters are all distinctive and ridiculous, but not to the point of being goofy. It's rare that a movie can be this funny and lighthearted, yet still have significant suspense and dramatic thrust. Even the most despicable characters were so distinctive and charismatic that you couldn't hate them. All of the pieces were fun to watch, and the dramatic potential of the pieces' crossing each other was milked for all it was worth. And the dialogue is damned good. I wish everybody would refer to microwaves as "science ovens". There is a particularly great running gag between the FBI agent and his boss (Louis C.K.) involving a story about ice fishing. How many movies can claim that?
But the script isn't even the most important part.
American Hustle is a vehicle for its actors, and in that respect it succeeds enormously. Bale goes through another one of his crazy body type changes to bring us the collected but subtly defective Irving, a role that he never overplays, and thanks to that he remains funny just for being who he is. Cooper, on the other hand, is not what you would call understated. He's bursting with this manic energy that crackles right off the screen. Whether he's monologuing at his mother with tiny curlers in his hair, or doing a hilarious impersonation of a sourfaced Louis C.K., he commands attention and builds suspense masterfully.
But it's the ladies who steal the show. Thank god for a (rare) screenplay that gives the ladies the opportunity to steal the show. They do not disappoint. Jennifer Lawrence walks the brilliant tightrope of being dimwitted without being stupid. She is constantly being dismissed despite making herself undismissable. You can see the twisted logic forming in her just-keen-enough eyes. And that New Yawk accent...
Amy Adams is the real star here. She speaks worlds with her eyes, and her character runs the gamut from fun to depressed to dangerous to violent to contrite and back again. She finds power in her imbalance though, and her struggle with what is real and what is fake in her life provides the real heart of this story. And that fake British accent...
I would argue that the reason the direction isn't anything special and the plot isn't too complex is that the film knows not to distract us from the performances on display. These actors electrify every scene. It's a whole lot of fun to watch.
The movie's not perfect. There's a cynicism and menace woven throughout much of the film that doesn't really have a payoff in the end. It might not be a super fun happy ending for all, but the tension sort of peters out in a way that isn't as cataclysmic as the movie sets it up to be. And the themes, although present and well-integrated, are not terribly complex.
As I said before, that only means American Hustle is not profound. So what? It's not the best movie of the year, and that's not a problem. As this interesting article about how an Oscar win could destroy the movie's reputation argues, we shouldn't expect it to be. I will enjoy watching it again and again and again not because it plumbs the depths of human meaning, but because of its electric performances, energetic and entertaining screenplay, pitch perfect soundtrack and costume design, etc. etc.
Some people are knocking Hustle for being Scorsese-lite, but as the film teaches us, we all hustle to survive. Who's the master: the painter? Or the forger? Either way, anytime I remember this movie, I have a smile on my face.
3.5 / 5 BLOBS
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