American Hustle

I am always leery when I see movie previews that don’t have any dialogue in them; they instead just have beautiful people walking around or dancing to cool music to try and get you pumped up about the movie. You can essentially deduce the fac that the producers are telling you "we know this movie is going to suck but hey, at least its full of beautiful people." This works great for porn but not when it comes to movies that you’re trying to get nominated for Oscars. And why do I mention porn in about 1 out of every 5 reviews of mine? I don’t know, maybe it’s I'm a lonely scrub. Or maybe it's because its an easy target, much like Jenna Jameson’s upper body area! I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself, something that was also overheard while watching the last Jameson porn but moving on.

David O. Russell can do no wrong in the eyes of Hollywood lately. The only problem I have with this is that all of his movies are good but never quite great. Three Kings was cool at times and had Ice Cube yelling about Black quarterbacks but in the end it was just ok. Silver Linings had a busty,sexy, and crazy Jennifer Lawrence, basically the recipe for my future wife; but in the end it simply had too much Brad Cooper and was a chick flick in disguise. I wont go through every one of his movies but you get it, he never quite deserves the acclaim he gets. So while I liked the cast he put together for American Hustle, I was trying to curb my enthusiasm a bit because I’ve been fooled by this con before.

The opening shot of the film reminds you of just how funny O. Russell can be as it shows you Christian Bale and how crazy dedicated he is when it comes to morphing into his roles. You see the huge potbelly he grew for this movie and him meticulously working on his toupee to cover up his male pattern baldness. Bale plays Irving Rosenfeld, a small time con man who meets and falls in love with Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams) at a party. He eventually finds out that she is pretty good at conning herself, as she has changed her identity to get away from a life that she dreaded. Everything is going great as they team up to expand his hustle game until one day Sydney is busted by the ambitious and slightly childish Richie Dimaso (Cooper). After she is busted, Richie runs a con on Sydney convincing her that Irving doesn’t really love her and that he is just using her as he does everything else in his life.

At the same time, Irving agrees to help Richie bring down 4 con men that are like him to help him boost his career in exchange for their immunity. The only problem with that is Richie keeps raising the stakes and things start to get out of control. I haven’t even mentioned the fact that Irving is married and has an adopted son that he absolutely adores. This is significant because he has a young pistol starter of a wife played by Jennifer Lawrence who is hustling him and constantly adding stress to his life with her near disasters and meddling. She provides great comic relief to go along with Bradley Cooper’s hair rollers, their eccentric 70’s clothing and jewelry, and Amy Adams oozing sex every time she’s on screen.

I love Amy Adams because she’s not Hollywood sexy but more like your typical every day person kind of sexy. If you ran into her on the street you better scoop that up with the quickness, otherwise you’ll end up with a cracked out Juliette Lewis. Everyone does a great job with their roles but this is especially true with Bale. He starts off as this cool and confidant man but as the old saying goes “hell hath no fury like a woman’s scorn”. You see him slowly begin to break down as both Adams and Lawrence’s games wreak havoc in his life and start to take their toll on him. Now again, we’re talking about rich people’s problems on screen, in real life Adams and Lawrence can as many games with me as they want; preferably at the same time! 

I liked this movie as the plot movies along a pretty good pace and keeps you interested as the stakes begin to rise. Plus every time there's even a small hint at a lull, Russell focuses in on Adam's tight little body and all is forgiven. When you finally reach the end of this hustling team's journey, you're left somewhat satisfied but you have this overall feeling like there wasn't quite the punch you were hoping for. O. Russell leaves you wanting more, more, more like the former porn star Andrea Truden begged for in her famous disco song. I rate this movie as FRESH as is was only a Hustle and Flow rap song away from being Tight.