American Hustle, written by Eric Warren Singer and David O. Russell - Nine out of 10

American Hustle, written by Eric Warren Singer and David O. Russell

Nine out of 10

If seen for the first time this motion picture had seemed outstanding, on the second take it loses some of its sparkle and scintillation, probably in large part for this cinephile on account of the discovery that the writer-director, David O. Russell, though definitely a talented creator, acts with such vicious aggresivity that he has infuriated quite a few of those who have worked with him, including George Clooney, who has stated that he had been about to…kill this scandalous film maker, on the set of Three Kings - http://realini.blogspot.com/2019/07/three-kings-based-on-story-by-john.html.

During the making of American Hustle, the same rather exasperating director is said to have been extremely aggressive with Amy Adams, a marvelous actress, and Christian Bale – another iconic figure – has had to intervene, just as Clooney had to on the set of the Three Kings and Adams has mentioned all the torment in an interview with GQ, said that movies are important, but not more than life and furthermore, she had felt awful when working with Russell, that had also had a conflict with Lily Tomlin.

It would help viewers not to know all this, the ignorance of so much abuse made the under signed ecstatic at the first look at American Hustle, but knowing it now, as HBO streamed the movie last night, was such a weight and diminished the value of the comedy, though the fact that it does not look so wonderful the second time is also due to some flaws that are not so evident when one sees the film for the first time, such as the presumable important amount of improvisation, which seems to be the Russell paradigm – see Flirting with Disaster http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/06/flirting-with-disaster-written-and.html

If we look at a summary of the plot, we may see that it Flirts with Incredulity – the con man that works with the exotic FBI agent, trying to get to the mayor of New Jersey, then to some politicians, members of congress and in the process comes across the Mafia that operates some casinos and then get a ‘fake’ sheik to entice some or all of these shady characters, then the reverse operation to trap the two million transferred by the FBI, based on the look at another ‘fake’ this time a false lawyer for the infamous Mafioso, who speaks Arabic by the way, looks so absurd as to be…well, surreal and seen a second time, loses its appeal and gets somewhat idiotic at times, unconnected, disjointed, though it is surely in large part due to the acknowledgment that the writer-director has done so much harm and thus one can be tempted to look with a magnifying glass at the faults…maybe a case of ‘the mind is its own place, it can make hell out of heaven and heaven out of hell…’

The cast is nevertheless superb, even when abused by the one that was supposed to comfort and support them, starting with the phenomenal Christian Bale – fantastic recently, again in Ford v Ferrari http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/01/ford-v-ferrari-written-by-jez.html - as the con man Irving Rosenfeld, joined by the splendid Amy Adams as Sydney Prosser, a former pole dancer who impersonates an English lady with connections at banks, so that she can convince people to come and pay $ 5,000 to Irving, in order to get a loan of 50k, only to be left with nothing, up to the moment when extravagant FBI agent Richie DiMaso enters the stage and cornering and detaining Sydney for three days, he extracts an agreement to get help to convict four criminals in exchange for freedom…

They get the rather complex mayor of Jersey, Carmine Polito aka Jeremy Renner in their sights, trying to bribe and catch him in offside, but the man walks away when Richie pushes too eagerly, only to be stopped in his tracks by the convincing, charming Irving, who becomes a bosom friend of the politician and brings in a sheik – another FBI agent in disguise, an American -Mexican that protests amusingly to the name of the operation that appears rather racist, only to have the con artist retort…’you are Mexican, what the fuck do you care?’

The maneuvers are sometimes hilarious, as the relationship between Richie aka great Bradley Cooper and his boss, played by the now disgraced but oh, so wonderful when he was on stage, Louis CK, who keeps starting an anecdote with the fishing expeditions that he had had with his father and brother, only to be diverted or stopped by the man under his command – Richie curls his hair, lives with his mother – and they share responsibility over the fish tank, which he has to feed and she has to keep aired or something that she fails to do and the fish die –and has a fiancée that he does not admit to, engaging in a bizarre, sometimes erotic and at other times outré affair with Sydney, verging on the very intimate, but just as they are about to have sex in the public restroom once, they stop and deflect in a rather strange manner…

Just as they bring in the sheik aka undercover agent, the stakes are raised when they come across the Mafiosi that had been operating casinos and gambling houses for decades, often through murder, extortion and illegal means anyway, one of them becomes too close to the estranged, crazy wife of Irving, Rosalyn aka Jennifer Lawrence – with a reputation of being ‘Teflon’ versus the calamitous behavior of the director – and thus becomes party to some conversations which the spouse overheard on the phone and which result in Irving being threatened with death…

It is a joy ride for those who see it for the first time and are unaware, disinterested in what happens on the set, during filming and only care about the end result, which had been acclaimed with no less than 10 (!) Oscar nominations, although it has won none…