American Hustle
The film is chalk full of good
performances, too bad they’re drowned out by weak storytelling, blathering
dialog and an unsure sense of style.
Bale, Cooper, Adams, Lawrence,
Renner and the rest all give solid performances. Bale as the self-assured
conman is as usual, methodical in his performance. Cooper is rightly over the top in his role as
the overly self-involved FBI agent. Adams is rock solid, albeit Russell and the
wardrobe department seem to think her cleavage should have top billing.
Lawrence does her Silver Linings shtick and does it really well. Renner is
wonderfully charismatic as the naïve corrupt mayor. And yet all these parts do
not add up to a great or even a good movie.
The poor storytelling that is on
display in this film well, it wastes all the strength of its performances. The film is merely a series of events strung
together to deliver the semblance of a story. The film starts of quickly enough,
but quickly spirals out of control as the narration speeds through events and
character development from one set piece to the next. The audience has no time
to breathe or take in any of the atmosphere that Russell rushes through on his
way to fill the tale with detail. Characters are introduced and then promptly
discarded as if they were nothing more than set pieces (poor Michael Pena).
Major events are set up that have the pacing of a teledrama, like the
documentaries on crime you see while skipping through the history channel in
the morning, albeit with a few fucks more. It’s such a flurrying buzz of events
and information presented in a disorganized fashion that by the end you’re not
entirely sure what you’ve just sat through. Sure the story is all their, the pieces
fit, but the elegance of the man who brought us The Fighter, Three Kings and
such is nowhere to be seen. The narration does not help things, there are three
different narrations and their used in an ad hoc manner as if they weren’t sure
whether to use them or not, so instead they cut it down and sprinkled it down
at random points throughout the film. All this combines to create an
environment where even a great performance is easily lost to sloppy filmmaking.
By mid-way through the film you realize, that you might be more interested in
reading the Wikipedia article about the Abscam then actually finishing this meandering
film.
Lawrence’s manic energy is drowned
out to make room for as much story as possible. Her character has no moments of
connection; she is all energy all the time. There is no respite from her
whimsy, she exits only to do bafflingly stupid things and is given no
redemptive qualities. Lawrence does her best, and I can imagine a lot of her
performance was left on the cutting room floor, but she can’t get over the fact
that her character is nothing more than a means to an end, like the car that
gets them from point A to point B. Renner fares little better as the nice but naïve
mayor. His character is made to look like such an oaf you begin to wonder how
he ever became a mayor of anything. These two are the main supporting cast so
if they’re treated like furniture, imagine how the third tier cast is treated.
Cooper and Bale are good in their
roles, but their resolved to acting out specific scenes that rarely tie into
the previous one. This makes it seem as if their performances are uneven and at
time all over the place. By the end of it, the two seem to blend in as almost
one character that could be interchangeable were it not for the hair styles. Russell
should’ve look to The Town to see how it is that a film makes a clean cop look
like the bad guy.
Adams on the other hand is
evidently trying and the camera pays her a lot of attention. Wait no sorry my
mistake, it pays her breasts a lot of attention. Apparently the films wardrobe
didn’t allow for a dress or shirt that didn’t show of her mammary glands. In a
film like this, this kind of attire distracts from the performance, which I
think was pretty good, but thanks to the camera’s constant focus on her tits or
hair I can’t be sure. In fact this brings up a great way to Segway to the next
point.
With films dull, textbook like
narrative structure one might be prone to dose of or possibly even turn of the
movie and save yourself at least one hour that this movie robs you of. In my
case that wasn’t the case, I strove to finish it even as my brain screamed at
me to just read the Wikipedia article to see what happens. Thankfully I stayed
which allowed me to experience the good part of the film. No not the end, that
was just as boring as the start. No, I talk of the technical side and visual
style of the film. The camera work is fantastic. As the camera flows and weaves
through each set piece, it’s almost like floating through the film on a cloud.
You find yourself ignoring the blathering dialogue and enjoying the picturesque
view of the film.
The art deco and cinematography
both do a wonderful job, even if they falter once or twice. The glitz and glamour
of the Abscam world is brought to vibrant light as the characters navigate
their harrowing odyssey. The disco scene in particular is stunning to behold.
The colours, the movement, the sound all match up perfectly. They almost make
you forget that you’re watching a shit film. The only odd part about the deco
style of the film is when they try to throw in some gritty realism. It
instantly looks out of place and knocks you from the daze. The start of the
disco scene is a prime example of this. It’s as if they are trying to be an ode
to seventies style fog machine but winds up looking cheap.
All said and done, the film is
really just a montage of events padded to a two plus hour’s length. That or the film is really three hours long
and was cut down without care for structure or pacing. The performances are
good, but they are good enough to overlook the storytelling problems that
painfully populate the screen. A film with tons of stuff happening, but lacking
in tension. The Globes and the Academy might be giving Russell a pass, by I
sure as hell won’t. But hey, at least it looks pretty.
Oh and it has a pretty decent soundtrack.
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