![]() |
Glamour and confidence tricks in David O. Russell's flashy American Hustle |
Director: David O. Russell
Cast: Christian Bale (Irving Rosenfeld), Amy Adams (Sydney
Prosser), Bradley Cooper (Richie DiMaso), Jennifer Lawrence (Rosalyn
Rosenfeld), Jeremy Renner (Mayor Carmine Polito), Louis CK (Stoddard Thorsen),
Jack Huston (Pete Musane), Michael Peña (Paco Hernandez/Sheik), Elisabeth Röhm
(Dolly Polito), Shea Whigham (Carl Elway), Alessandro Nivola (Anthony Amada),
Robert De Niro (Victor Tellegio)
In 2013, American
Hustle was nominated for ten Oscars and won none of them. Somehow, being
invited to the big party but not receiving any prizes was strangely fitting for
a film about small time grifters forced into a big game way beyond their
control. Russell’s film is like a celebration of his strengths and weaknesses
as a director: it’s stuffed with some very good (if rather mannered)
performances, offers lots of dynamic film making, but is still basically a
rather cold and arch film that’s hard to really invest in – rather like a con
game in itself.
In 1978, Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) is a small-time
grafter, running scams with his partner and lover Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams),
who uses the identity of a young English aristocrat “Lady Edith Greenslly”.
Rosenfeld longs to leave his unstable, selfish wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence)
for Sydney, but fears he will lose all his access to his adopted son. Rosenfeld
and Prosser’s career of clever investment frauds is brought to an end when
Prosser is caught red-handed by FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper).
DiMaso forces the pair into his entrapment operation, targeting New Jersey
politicians with offers of bribes as part of a Fake Sheik investment. Initially
it targets Mayor Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner), but the operation quickly
expands, as the ambitious and impulsive DiMaso constantly follows every
connection and the operation expands to dangerous levels, taking in the mafia.
Scared, Rosenfeld and Prosser desperately try to play both ends against the
middle.
American Hustle is
a decent film, which pulls together the sort of capers, turmoil and antics that
you would expect from a film about a long con. It throws into the melting pot
the vibes of several other films, from The
Sting to Goodfellas, and asks us
to admire the results. Russell encourages the actors to play it with an edgy
verisimilitude that pretty much works as a metaphor for con men. Each
performance is an effective display of high-wire character acting work laced
with arch, studied tricks. But only rarely do you get a sense of something
that’s real.
That’s part of a film that wants to have a cake and eat it
as well. It’s striking in the entire story that the most sympathetic character
is the initial target, Jeremy Renner’s well-meaning, passionate New Jersey
politician, bamboozled into taking a bribe (money he mostly uses in the local
community) because he is convinced it’s a crucial part of getting Arab
investment. It’s even more striking that the most honest, subdued (and deadly)
character is the Mafia kingpin Victor Tellegio, played with chilling menace by
an unbilled Robert DeNiro. Nearly everyone else on the side of the entrapment
operation is pretty much a selfish prick or verging on the unhinged.
But then that’s part of the point of the film, which throws
two people who know what they are doing (Rosenfeld and Prosser) at the mercy of
people playing with fire (Roselyn and in particular DiMaso, a permed,
tightly-wound powderkeg). This is one hell of a performance from Bradley Cooper
– and a sign again after Silver Linings
Playbook that Russell gets something out of him few other directors can.
Cooper is a force of nature, a bundle of terrible impulses combined with an
utter lack of shame or self-control, who is quite happy to trample over
everyone to get what he wants and has no regard whatsoever for the danger he
puts himself and others into. Utterly unpredictable, he never sticks to a plan,
veers between rage and hysterical laughter and, worst of all, is always
convinced he’s right.
It’s DiMaso who spins the operation into dangerous waters with
his vaulting ambition to land yet another big fish, recklessly peddling
insubstantial, unprepared lies on top of each other – to the terror and horror
of practised peddlar of bullshit Rosenfeld, whose whole successful schtick is
based on saying “no” and having the mark do all the desperate work. DiMaso’s
approach not only puts the operation at risk, it puts lives at risk – not that
DiMaso cares, preoccupied as he is with his childish one-upmanship with his
boss and a teenage sexual obsession with Prosser.
What chance do the (mostly) small-fish politicians and local
figures have, whose lives are placed on the altar of DiMaso’s ambition? It’s no
wonder that, late in the film, our conmen heroes start to feel guilt and
remorse – none more so than Irving Rosenfeld. Played by Christian Bale with the
sort of tricksy, Olivier-ish disguises that he so loves (in this case increased
weight, a balding comb-over and a pair of tinged glasses he obsessively fiddles
with), Rosenfeld is an operator happy with the level he is working at and
incredibly wary of stepping up into the dangerous big leagues. Justifiably
convinced of his own professionalism at fleecing money and winning trust,
Rosenfeld has no problem with taking money from the selfish but every problem
in the world with destroying the life of a fundamentally honest man. Bale’s performance,
for all the tricks, manages to successfully build a picture of a selfish man
who believes himself in his way to be honest in a way and is just trying to
make his way.
That way also involves balancing between two very different
women. Amy Adams does decent work as a blowsy fake-aristocrat, sporting a
series of tops with neck lines that literally plunge down to her waist,
although she is perhaps a little too “nice girl next door” to really convince
as the love-em-to-manipulate-them Prosser. She’s not also helped by the script
giving her an ill-defined arc of self-doubt linked to pretending to be someone
else. Sweet as the genuine love can be her between her and Rosenfeld – and
excellent as her chemistry is between Bale and Cooper – it’s the character who
remains the least knowable in the film.
Also not helping is the fact that Jennifer Lawrence burns
through the film as Rosalyn, the sort of electric, larger-than-life but still
very real performance of arrogance, selfishness, dangerous stupidity and greed
that marked her out as a major actress. Whether inadvertently putting
Rosenfeld’s life at risk through blabbing details she’s half-overheard and
half-understood, cleaning the kitchen while singing an aggressive rendition of Live and Let Die or nearly burning the
house down because she won’t believe metal can’t go in “the science oven” (aka
microwave), Lawrence is the film’s MVP.
Russell’s film showcases all these actors brilliantly, but
his overall story remains a little cold and not as clever as it thinks. With a
film about conmen you expect a final rugpull – and this film sort of manages
one – but the story telling to take us there isn’t quite as articulate and
clever as it needs to be in order to be really satisfying. Perhaps it’s the
film’s ragged, hip, indie style of telling – or the air that the actors are
making a lot of this stuff up as they go with edgy, semi-improvised
performances – but the film never really engrosses or engages. For all that we
see the inner worlds of Rosenfeld and Prosser, I can’t say I really, truly
cared what happened to them.
Instead Russell focuses on the marshalling of his resources,
and cool, slick film-making. He uses expert camera work and editing, mixed with
a superbly chosen soundtrack, overlaid with voiceover, sudden transitions, some
narrative jumps and a vibrant sense of cool to make a story that finally feels
a little too much like a style-over-substance trick – in fact a con game all of
its very own, as enjoyable and entertaining as the rest of the film, but when
it finishes you realise your pockets are empty.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.