American Hustle opens with the title card “A few of these things took place.” It sets the welcome for the audience, an either joking or dryly realistic setting. This is a well-made and gleeful, blatant ‘interpretations’ of events that, shall we say, biopics are wondering why all the fuss, because after all, there is nothing absolute. It is where the satirical truthiness in the life of stephen colbert was depicted in the movies. The American hustle flirts incessantly with its protagonists, or rather their core-pulling prostatis inside the belly straight into the disco madness, but somehow never makes it. And maybe that’s meant to be.
Numerous congressmen-inner-turns unused campaign funds scandal Precisely, the film is based on ipod to iphone and has a peculiar, daring storyline. Christian Bales’s character is Irving Rosenfeld, by day you see him running a clean change business, and by other parts of the day also operating a kleptomaniac. When Irving finds a young woman named Sydney Prosser who calls herself ‘fearless,’ swimming in a friends pool, he instinctively feels as if she gets straight to the heart of matters-a woman who gets the musician Duke Ellington.
Working as a team, they set up an active fraud in which Sydney wears the mask of Lady Edith Greensly – an invented pseudo aristocrat of British descent who claims that she has regards “banking contacts in Europe”. Together they target the most vulnerable – those who are in dire need of money and are willing to put down a retainer fee of $5000 with the hopes of receiving much more later on. It is in this context that one of the first real hitches in the plot occurs. This is, at least to some extent, such a sub-genre where stealing with a swap movie is involved, but the stealing with a swap is either well know (and therefore not easy to alien) or completely without skill. For instance, in a good con film, there is at least one or two quite unbelievable and brilliant twists. Then again, American Hustle, American Bullsh**, is not particularly concerned with the hustle itself; it all comes down to the BS.
It is full of shifty characters and steamy women, though most are acting foolishly. Milton and Sydney catch the eye of the ambitious, and terrifyingly disturbed, FBI agent Richie DiMaso, played by Bradley Cooper, who coerces them into taking part of a bigger operation where they have to play the role of a lure for the corrupt mob and political weight. It is the same here – everyone tries in this world to strive for more: do more, be more, have more – any means necessary – and that’s what makes the movie so American. It is necessarily so. The American dream above all is about the change.
Rosenfeld of Bale believes that, in one way or another, ‘We are all in some sort of con,’ while Adams’ Prosser admits that ‘My dream, above all else, was to be somebody else.’ In one of their earliest meetings, one new woman takes Winters into the back of one of his dry cleaners and shows the finest of the unused post-consumer fashion lost by inebriated self irresponsible clients. She performs acts, enjoying the remnant pieces of the lost designers. It’s Pretty Woman but on the pavements. The necklines are a shade low, although the fashions are always overdone, for it is not that sort of a film which is more about little than the craving for large.
It is about cosmetic improvement, relieving people of the pains that they so wish, doing evil deeds and predation by justifying that all efforts put in are for the sake of a dream. The first time we meet Rosenfeld, it is with great agony that he puts on and creates an elaborate and paid comb over to conceal his very average if unsightly maturing male baldness. This character is forcing back the realities of her life to change to something less oppressive and more appealing. There is logic in Irving that seems to say our current selves are merely figments of our thoughts. Personality is cooked, rather directly in the setting of this movie.
From in a world filled up of bulls*** and lies where Susan can exist only with Irving and be sane, they monogamously create a love story that at least we can cheer for to some extent. Of course, there is a thorn in their rose of a love story in the form of Irving’s unpredictable, scheming, crazy hot, straight up bernanners wife Rosalyn Jennifer Lawrence, a woman whom he is with primarily owing this to his affinity for the adopted son. Reality will not be called as fun in her voice, but she will state it as nuts.
In the matter concerning his wife, as it is in the case of his business, Irving maintains that он συζητήσεων σε uygulusuz kone ne mutlak survival, however, he agrees that if left with only for Fringe isn’t the best options. This man is not trying to survive, though. He’s trying to get one up on someone who is trying to get one up on him. And every character in the movie is inspired to ‘get’ rather than be contented with ‘what they have,’ which is fine, or which can be sickening. As Rosalyn of Jennifer Lawrence puts it, ‘there are times when the choices are only toxic ones’ and as such a powerful need for something inperti that smells like flowers with an undertone of something rotten.
Overall, the film serves its purpose rather well. It is an interesting fantasy that one can safely indulge in – no, not a healthy life of crime per se, but one that carries those gilded expectations of the American Dream, though with sinister undertones. In one of those more realistic parts of the movie, where the action is mostly in close-ups, the supernatural world meets nice lives, writer Russell has a strange obsession with referencing the past. Or rather a generous end with respect to images and films. For instance, Adams’ character Lady Edith’s allusions are to once in a while Barbara Stanwyck’s lovably wise legged figure in The Lady Eve. Each of them is a hard person in a film that is hard because it is about hard people.
Everything is in the ideal mise en scene; performing, hair, music are more juxtaposed, more emphasized than they usually ‘should’ be. It is, as though, all this is meant to be entertaining then, not over-entertaining. However, before we can be completely engrossed by the splendour that every subsequent scene seems to impress us with, American Hustle gives it all back with a bang as if the shimmer has been hollowed out by Adams’ fake British hardassness.
Or by showing us last year’s ‘sexiest man alive’ (Cooper) in undeniable and pretty non-masculine, tight curlers.
There is an appropriate amount of fuss made over the hair and makeup in the movie, if we can come to that, and it appears to be about more than just taking offense of the hairs styles of the ‘70s. Of course, there’s no shortage of ‘70s-horal teasing available. The hairstyles have an exaggerated man-made sense of untidiness, as are the characters of Sydney, Richie, and Irving, who are inventions ofthemselves. Rather, they are merely phantoms of a dishonest pastiche of the ideal narrative of how their lives should be. There is one appearance by an actor who is always in a Martin Scorsese film and one who from a period of their professional career wants to demonstrate that we are not observing huge actors, we are observing dressing people that cleanse leftovers from the dry cleaners.
And regarding the era immediately preceding the main plot, both Judy Becker production designer and Michael Wilkinson designer, together with Danny Elfman composer and Susan Jacobs music, create a wonderfully exaggerated simulation of the period. It’s less about the reality, and more about what the reality projected out or what we, through detaching time, project in it.
If Boogie Nights can be viewed as Scorsese’s Goodfellas 2, then it is the ‘let us enjoy the pleasures’ approach towards the life of John Holmes. At the same time, American Hustle is the non-chalant version of the con business. This is not in any manner as vile a disappointment as a House of Games. We only get a small window into the consequences of all the machinations of Sydney and Irving, and even then, most of them have already attempted some atonement. Irving Rosenfeld took his inspiration from Middle America Mel Weinberg, the Long Island con artist turned FBI collaborator, and in real life, he was more the scumbag than the gentleman his character here suggests. As for Beverly, her end in real life was nowhere near as pleasant as Lawrence’s version.
However, in American Hustle as much as they make lovable the two protagonists, it is Jeremy Renner’s Mayor Carmine Polito who is the most delightful character. This forms the base of his distinctive personality: a good-hearted politician who is ready to be opportunistic, but with the interest of the citizens at heart. He’s also the character that we root for the most and seeing how the film is, that’s probably by design. In American Hustle, the idea appears to be to criticize ever accepted American double standards, some of which glorify what is useless and dismiss that which is necessary.
In terms of the Hollywood Ensemble Russell alumni, it is absolutely terrific. Adams managing British accent, though appearing subtle an ‘off’ to many viewers, is more a matter of skill than most may appreciate, and she is able to alternate between emotive softness and willful strength. It is well-known that he is doing the De Niro with ‘bale’ version of De Niro, which, nonetheless, is the best possible way to do it. First, Irving, the character, is a caricature, a pale shadow of the real thing. She is beautiful in everything she does, and when she is Lawrence – it is incomprehensible as to why she is not nominated for an award. Her East Coast accent is hit and miss, but she is spontaneous, rather larger than life, than fully appreciated with easy humour, dully sighted. The most surprising performance by this actor is probably Louis C.K., playing the beleaguered FBI boss of Richie.
There is motion in the film which is kinetic which seems appropriate. American Hustle is disappointing in this pov as there is confusion rather than an easy transition. Sometimes, it feels like the film has Attention Deficit Disorder and every new actor, or every new moment or every new sequence is so entertaining that it lacks substance. When one is exploring or is in the process of exploring one thing, the attention immediately shifts to the next. One would think it is rather too complex in appearance but looking from the whole, the film is devoid of any organization. True, the disorder might be deliberate, but its execution does not quite yield the required benefits.
This sprawling carnival ride is perhaps more sensational but even this is a little less than what is promised – a true sense of repercussions is never really there in this film. If you are making a film about fakers then at some point you have to reveal a lot of firmer and more brutal realities too. Here, however, such oaths are taken not too much to remove completely all the masks but only for a few acts, exposing the characters only partially. It does not give us an impression of who these people actually are but rather makes us forget about them.
There’s also pretty much no weight in how those things level out, which leads to something of an anticlimactic feeling. There is still tension and the characters are being built up for an active conflict, yet the music is faced only by the least sympathetic of them, and even then it is not so much a conclusion as a flaccid shrug. For some, like the cockroaches, hiding behind the nearest refrigerator, it’s just life. They go on to see another day in which they fabricate a new one for themselves and chase after another dream. Live and let die. On the other hand, perhaps that is the point.
Verdict
There is no doubt that you would enjoy the American Hustle movie, though it is certainly not just a straightforward american cliché. But in the final scene, the story does not offer the emotional hook to take it off the wild fun that it was in to some real significance unlike this. American Hustle is filled with clever and witty humour, dramatic moments of tenderness and occasionally more profound complexities than what is seen at first. The movie suffers drawbacks that every other artistic piece does, however this is how the story is evolving perfectly. While it mostly falls short of the expectations it creates, this is a joyride that you cannot pass up.
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