Review of Amsterdam (2022) by Hnestlyonthesly — 10 Jan 2023

Do I have questions about this movie? Sure. Am I confused by how many times someone stared directly into the camera to say the word “Amsterdam”? Absolutely. Do I think this permanently marred my ability to enjoy this otherwise quirky romp through one auteur’s “Rosencrantz and Guildensterning,” as Friend put it to us, of the Plot Against America as told from a multi-racial lens? Certainly not. Do I think that De Niro likely did not memorize his lines? Yes. Does he seem to take a lot of roles in his old age which necessitate he get shot at while he gives a speech? Possibly. Was his continued speech during that gun fight a bit extra? A bit? Yes, at least a bit. Does that mean that someone should compare watching this movie to spoiled sushi, as Friend did? No, this movie wasn’t not poison, or even poisson. (The last time I walked out of a movie, by the way, if we’re counting, was Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, and the exact moment that I noped out was the third time that someone read a quote off their cell phone during the parent-teacher meeting and the only reason I even tried to watch it was because we were on such a good run of movies that accepted the pandemic as reality.).

There is a tragic quality to the way in which Valerie (Margot Robbie) and Harry (JD Washington) tiptoe around their third-wheel Burt (Christian Bale) in the movie. The whole trailer is very upfront that this is the story of a platonic throuple, which immediately brings to mind the awkward and unasked for favoritism of Dorothy. Amsterdam is so feverishly intent on the creation of biracial couplings in order to formulate a Fifth Element-type thesis for how to counter hate that it sometimes is unwilling to consider non-romantic alternatives, which is odd to say, since Amsterdam is so open to considering a whole host of plot alternatives and fantasy sequences, divergences from the main story in order to experiment with storytelling.

One of my favorite departures from the linear narrative style is the way that Valerie and Harry’s story of the missing afternoon is told through a flashback with non-diegetic narrative overtop, like a scene from a much-beloved movie from my childhood, The Sandlot.

There was a time this past pandemic when I couldn’t stop talking about David Starr Jordan and the murder of Jane Stanford, and I feel like Lulu Miller’s book brings together some of the loose threads of this movie’s Committee of the 5. And on the topic of The Five: Raimi Malek’s Tom has a wonderfully twisty interchange with Bale early on in the first act, which really casts doubt on the morality of the birder MI-5 fellow working to stop the Second World War.

Some might say that Taylor Swift’s presence in the movie was too… swift. Some might say that she would rather kill herself than be present for the final, preachy act, but I stand by her decision to Emma Roberts herself. When she reads this review, which I am confident will happen at some point, I want her to know that her performance was appreciated, each and every time a wheel rolled over her mangled body, I yelped.

Ultimately, Amsterdam is going to go down as one of the biggest box office losers of the past few years and that shouldn’t mean much to you, because this is but a cautious and conservative experiment on the part of David O. Russell.