Review of American Hustle (2013) by Ragekoi — 21 Dec 2013

American Hustle is a film that is extremely over-hyped. Every big-name review site has given this film incredibly generous scores. I saw this and was a tad disappointed, because I didn't feel it lived up to it's hype.

However, I enjoyed the film nonetheless. American Hustle centers around two con artists named Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) and Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams). During their long run of scamming people and stealing their money, they are eventually caught by FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper).

Instead of arresting them, Richie devises a plan to use the con artists to bust corrupt politicians. In order to do so, they need to become allies with the mafia, the universally loved mayor of New Jersey (Jeremy Renner), and a man of false importance entitled "The Sheik".

Along with this, there is a huge subplot involving love among the characters. Sydney fakes love with Richie in order to get closer to him and make him trust her, and Irving cannot decide who to ultimately be with; his crazy and gossipy wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence) or Sydney.

He has a hard time leaving his wife because he loves his stepson Danny. This here lies the first problem with this film. At times there were so many sexually charged scenes I couldn't remember if I was watching a crime drama or a porno.

Along with the over-abundance of provocative moments, each character is interesting, there is too much going on in order to become invested in these people. In terms of acting, I had an issue with the actors dropping accents they had.

Christian Bale was pretty consistent, but Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence dropped their accent frequently. Amy Adams' character also has a fake identity as a British woman with bank connections, however her accent isn't convincing in the slightest and it's hard to see how she conned so many people with such a soft and easily fake accent.

Other than accent issues, each actor was very good. Even though the actors were really good, the cast list enhanced the hype factor a lot more, thus bringing the movie down for me more. When I saw Christian Bale, Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, and Louis CK (Who had one of my favorite characters) on the cast list, I got really pumped.

But that just hurt more when the movie didn't meet my expectations. The movie's writing was enjoyable, however the banter felt very forced, along with trying to replicate what "The Big Lebowski" did with explicit banter.

Some consider this film a comedy, but it wasn't a laugh-fest the whole way through. Regardless, the moments that were funny hit their mark very well. The soundtrack and cinematography were both stellar, aside from occasionally annoying close ups.

Even though I don't believe this film lives up to it's hype or properly utilizes it's two hour run time, American Hustle is a movie with the occasional funny moment, some great use of music, and plot twists up the wazoo that will probably entertain any fan of the crime drama genre.