AMERICAN HUSTLE

AMERICAN HUSTLE

Jeri Jacquin, Movie Maven

Opening in theatres this week from director David O. Russell and Annapurna Pictures comes a look back to the AMERICAN HUSTLE.

This film tells the story of Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale), a complete con man who takes life one hustle at a time. He falls for Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams) who helps bring the hustle a few steps up the ladder and classier.

That is until they get caught by Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) who is a hustler of another kind. As an FBI agent Richie wants to get all the bad guys from politicians to the mafia and he’s going to use Irving and Sydney to do it.

Beginning with Mayor Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner), Irving begins to lead Richie further and further into it all. The plan is to have a Shiek Abdullah (Michael Pena) invest in New Jersey to bring industry and jobs. But there is a problem, Irvings wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence), a woman whose mouth and attitude have no filter.

Now Irving, Sydney and Richie are spinning like crazy to keep the hustle under control before they all fall down!

FINAL WORD: Bale as Rosenfeld is interesting to watch – not for acting reasons but because of his character’s mannerisms and dress. That in itself is enough to jaw drop because the transformation is pretty wild. That being said his performance didn’t blow me away and I’ll sum up why after I’ve finished here.

Adams as Sydney gets a chance to be gritty in her low cut nicely done British accent. Between babysitting Irving and charming Richie she had more than her fair share of man problems. There was no doubt who was the brains of the operation – it’s just too bad she was dealing with those two guys!

Cooper as Richie is pretty much a twitchy-perm-wearing-living-with-his-Mom-wanna-be-FBI-big-shot. Yea, he’s still cute but not so cute as to kind of bore me a time or two. I know, I know maybe I had seat-lag or something.

Renner gets to play a nice guy family man politician who isn’t above trying to make his hometown a better place or is he a nice guy family man politician who isn’t above taking a bribe masked as a make is hometown a better place – I don’t know.

Lawrence as Rosalyn is annoying, but that’s the point. She’s married to a criminal and as long as that criminal keeps her happy it’s all-good. My problem here is that the commercials make her role out to be so big when it’s only her presence that’s so big!

Other cast include: Jack Huston as Pete Musane, Shea Whigham as Carl Elway, Alessandro Nivola as Anthony Amado, Elisabeth Rohm as Dolly Polito and Louis C.K. as Stoddard Thorsen with a nice cameo that I’m keeping to myself.

TUBS OF POPCORN: I give AMERICAN HUSTLE three tubs of popcorn out of five. The music was awesome, the costuming brilliant and parts of the story interesting to be sure. I wanted to enjoy it more than I really did.

The reason these characters didn’t blow me away was because I felt like I was watching a twisted GOOD FELLAS, a messed up version of THE STING and at 138 minutes in the seat can you blame me for not feeling like I’d been American hustled into watching it?

Yea, I’m feeling grinchy I suppose. It’s like being eleven again when I asked for a pair of roller skates for Christmas and didn’t get them until I was 16. I’d been following the progress of this film for what seems like that long of a time only to finally get to see the film and think ‘yea, okay, thanks’ – moving along!

In the end – everyone hustles to survive!