Once again, director David O. Russell (Three Kings, I [Heart] Huckabees, The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook) delivers just in time for Christmas and the Oscars.
“American Hustle” again features Silver Linings‘ bipolar lovers Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper trying to find themselves in the Great Northeast. But they are just part of an overwhelming cast, this time led by Christian Bale, Amy Adams, and supported by Jeremy Renner, Louis C.K., Robert Deniro, and an entire army of FBI agents, mobsters, Arab sheiks, and crooked politicians.
At times a con movie, at times a love triangle, and at times an expose of seamy doings in the dawn of Atlantic City’s casino era (1978-80), Hustle at its heart is an ensemble character study of the uniquely American project of creating your own persona, trying to become the person you feel you should be, no matter what circumstances have dealt you.
Bale and Adams are a con team, permanent partners with an on again off again love and lust for each other. Bale (who gained 60 pounds for this role and displays his rolly polly belly without shame), plays Irving Rosenfeld, a small time grifter who grew up breaking windows to help his father’s glass business. Adams, as Sydney/Edith, came from New Mexico to New York City, determined to lift herself from her limited options as a pole dancer. They drift into faux finance and dealing art fakes, always being careful not attract too much attention. Their little business is at times complicated by Irving’s unhinged wife, played by an almost over-the-top Lawrence. Irving has adopted her 7 year old son, and won’t leave the little family despite his lust for Adams’ svelte and firey redhead.
Their little schemes fall afoul of a trolling FBI agent, Richie DiMaso, played by Cooper with manic intensity and ambition. He traps them into teaching him the con business, so he can snare “white collar criminals”, and grease his route up the FBI ladder, bypassing his passive boss (Louis C.K., who does nary a comic turn). He promises to free them of all charges (financial fraud) if they help him with four cases.
Without much of a plan, this trio starts creating cons starting with art forgery, but quickly morphing into political bribery and a glancing attack on Meyer Lansky’s Florida mob. Renner, as a New Jersey mayor with honest intentions to lift his constituents out of the Nixon/Carter recessions, befriends Irving, and ends up putting his 20 year career and family of six at risk. Deniro appears uncredited as Lansky bag man Victor Tellegio.
Hustle is a densely realised film, filled with double crosses, overflowing with side characters, yet not overburdened with sub plots. The central narrative thrust follows Irving (Bale) and Sydney/Edith (Adams) as they work to extricate themselves from DiMaso’s (Cooper) clutches. As this is white collar crime, there is no violence, apart from the domestic variety and one disgruntled underling whupping his boss upside the head with an old-style phone.
Russell uses several running gags to emphasize his disdain for the usual big studio movie conventions. Two characters seeming destined to end up in bed together have several steamy scenes, but never actually consummate. A fishing story, started as a metaphor to underline a lesson in how best to catch criminals, never gets finished. The final double cross is never fully revealed, leaving us to puzzle how it was pulled off; think Ocean’s Eleven without the cut scenes showing the mechanics behind the magic.
A few small quibbles mar this otherwise engrossing adventure. Lawrence and Renner are both far younger than their characters are written to be. Russell doesn’t fully execute the denouement between Renner and Bale, where Renner’s politician (aren’t they all con men themselves?) is meant to feel genuinely hurt by the professional con man. The director just couldn’t get the timing right between the two, and the large family and worried wife get in the way, rather than building sympathy for the soon-to-be incarcerated mayor. And the ending, purporting to show how everyone ended up in the aftermath, feels tacked on, a sop to getting things “right”, Hollywood style.
Still, one of the best films I’ve seen in the last year. 4.5/5
For those who care, the plot is (very) loosely based on the Abscam scandals of the late 70’s. For an excellent summary (don’t read this until AFTER you’ve seen the film) of that event and its replication in this film, see the Daily Beast here: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/12/17/the-real-story-and-lesson-of-the-abscam-sting-in-american-hustle.html