American Hustle – review
Christian Bale, Amy Adams and Bradley Cooper in American Hustle. Photograph: François Duhamel/AP
Director David O. Russell is on a roll. He has racked up a hat-trick of Oscar-worthy hits over the last few years with The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook and now American Hustle.
The Fighter (2010) was an intense and touching character study of a washed-up boxer named Dicky Eklund, who tried to help his half-brother Micky Ward achieve the success and respect in the ring where he had failed whilst in and out of jail. A great cast (including Christian Bale, Amy Adams and Melissa Leo) and the vision of Bale’s co-lead and producer, Mark Wahlberg, brought the story of two very different brothers and their large Irish and borderline-crazy family to life.
Bale claimed a Best Actor Academy Award as Dicky, the drug fiend caught up in a spiral of addiction and reliving of his magic moment in the ring when he put down Sugar Ray Leonard. Leo also won a gong for her role as Dicky and Micky’s ambitious and embattled mother.
Silver Linings Playbook (2012) surprised many with eight Oscar nominations for a quirky rom-com that is also a drama about coping with mental illness. Bradley Cooper’s character has bi-polar and has just spent eight months in a mental health facility. In his attempts to deal with his condition, whilst living at home with his mum and dad, he coerces his neighbour [played by Jennifer Lawrence], who has plenty of her own issues, into helping him prove to his estranged wife that he has changed. His wife has a restraining order out on him and his dad is an OCD-affected and superstitious part-time gambler played by Robert De Niro.
Bizarre – yes, but again the tone is beautifully pitched, the main characters are disarming as their good hearts are often misplaced in their desperation. Jennifer Lawrence left Oscar night clutching a Best Actress prize.
With award season looming again, Russell has given himself and his cast a good shot at Oscar glory once more with his latest feature, American Hustle. He has plucked the key players from those aforementioned films (Bale, Cooper, Adams, De Niro, Lawrence) and added Jeremy Renner and Louis C.K. to an already stellar cast, who all sparkle and sizzle throughout a 1970s period piece con-artist movie with so much great chemistry at play that it should come with a health warning.
The plot of American Hustle is fairly simple, but the predicament created by the plot sets up a wonderfully rich game of catch a crook to catch some bigger crooks, where the con is on in more ways than one. You’ll get what I mean when you watch it. There is not just swindling at work, as ego, jealousy, love and power all play a part, not just money.
The main story sees fraudster Irving Rosenfeld [Bale] partnering up with his girlfriend, Sydney Prosser [Adams], to make a successful hustling team, but when they are rumbled by a go-getting FBI agent, Richie DiMaso [Cooper], they are forced to cut a deal in exchange for helping to bust several allegedly corrupt big-name politicians.
To do this, DiMaso wants them to set up a sting and hook in these politicians, including the Mayor of Camden, New Jersey, Carmine Polito [Jeremy Renner], to secure evidence of complicity with dodgy dealings.
They are up against it though, as Polito is a popular figure who is close to his community, but he is also keen to rejuvenate the gambling enterprises of Atlantic City, and they get themselves in deep (maybe too deep) with some big lies and some powerful (and dangerous) figures in New Jersey, including mobsters such as Victor Tellegio [De Niro].
The cast is sensational, especially Adams and Bale who are thoroughly convincing as a criminal duo and troubled lovers, and we feel the heat as the action and tension cranks up to breaking point and consciences start to kick in. This is another class film from an in-form director who really knows how to seduce, captivate and entertain his audience all at the same time.
The icing on the cake is that this is a hugely funny film, in a dark and dirty kind of way. There is a hilarious opening scene involving a ludicrous hair-piece and there are big laughs throughout. Watch out for Cooper’s DiMaso getting violently drunk on power and obsession and an amazing showdown between a perplexed Irving and his ignored and delusional wife, played with gusto by Lawrence.
American Hustle is sure to pick up a host of Oscar nominations when the 86th Academy Awards nominees are announced on 16th January 2014.
American Hustle (15)
Directed by David O. Russell
Starring: Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Amy Adams, Robert De Niro, Jeremy Renner, Louis C.K., Michael Peña, Jack Huston, Elisabeth Röhm
Running time: 138 minutes
American Hustle is showing at the Hackney Picturehouse throughout January.