American Hustle

even Bale can’t help pointing at it.

When we finished watching American Hustle, I struggled to work out the real star of the movie. Was it Amy Adams? Amy Adams’ cleavage which seemed to both exposed yet unreachable for the majority of the film? Was it a completely unrecognisable Christian Bale? Or maybe even Bradley Cooper’s perm or Jeremy Renner’s astonishing quiff ? Nope, for me it was definitely the science oven that Mayor Carmine (Renner) bestowed on Bale’s character Irving as a gift of friendship.

With minimal tweaking, this is a film that could have easily played as a farce or a comic pastiche of the 70’s gangster/thriller genre it tries to firmly root itself in, rather than a drama with plenty of comic moments. All of the main characters are to a degree exaggerations- Irving is exactly the sort of person you would never consider asking the time of, let alone buying anything off, so obviously he ends up as an art dealer in the epilogue, the mayor has more than a whiff of used car salesman about him, Cooper’s DiMaso, the FBI agent who to entrap Amy Adam’s Sydney Prosser and Bale’s Irving, has the kind of manic intensity about him that only someone living at home with his mum could have and so on. That’s before we get to the great cameo from Robert DeNiro which is frustratingly good enough to show that the man still has it and needs to shoot his agent who keeps on talking him into appearing it absolute tripe.

Anyhoo, the story that all these great creations are ensconced in revolves round Irv and Sydney’s small time scam operation where they con $5,000 out of needy individuals on the pretext that Sydney is actually part of the English nobility and has access to funds in the UK for loans. The $5k fee is non refundable and Irving makes no promises about being able to get the further funding from his sources. He doesn’t of course. They’re basically ripping off exactly the sort of people who can’t afford to be ripped off and there never seems to be any consequence, which is a little odd. Well, there are no consequences until DiMaso catches them in a sting and in turn recruits them to help catch others on the take. As the film progresses, DiMaso gets more manic and more ambitious, eventually losing control of the situation.

Throughout the film the dialogue and performances are great. The need for a voice over is slightly disappointing but doesn’t spoil the film. It’s a shame that the plot is a little light though. Yes, it has more depth than Pacific Rim but it’s not exactly deep and I had expected more from it. There’s a sort of twist but you can’t really call it a proper twist as it’s pretty well telegraphed and not a surprise when it happens.

American Hustle is perhaps more fun than an Oscar nominee deserves to be, it’s just a little bit odd it’s not as well developed as most are. A good way to pass a couple of hours, just don’t expect to feel the need to revisit it any time soon.

This entry was posted in Thriller. Bookmark the permalink.