Ben Oliver

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film

American Hustle

You’re nothing to me until you’re everything.
15 June 2014

David O. Russell’s con man drama is a star studded hot mess. This film pissed me off in ways I can describe, and some I can’t. Let’s get the good out of the way first:

And on to the bad:

American Hustle isn’t very good but it thinks it is. That’s one thing that pisses me off.

Here’s another; throwing big names into a film does not make it a classic. I already mentioned that Amy Adams was good (and her character was genuinely interesting), but no one else put any work into it. Bradley Cooper (who is never great at the best of times) is not doing anything worth watching. We keep getting shots of how Bale has transformed himself but he’s really boring. Jennifer Lawrence, a talented actress, gets nothing to work with.

There’s others. Jeremy Renner, Robert DeNiro, Michael Pena, that guy with the mask from Boardwalk Empire - all with nothing to do. It’s rubbish.

The whole look and feel of the film also did nothing for me. It’s pedestrian, and tries to make up for its weaknesses by blaring out a stupid clumsy soundtrack picked purely to sell CDs.

There’s no point in me going on, American Hustle rubbed me the wrong way. Avoid unless you really like Amy Adams, which (did I mention?) I do.