American Hustle

It is not easy being another person. It involves considerable effort, just as those minutes spent at the beginning of American Hustle by Irving Rosenthal, trying to hide his bald head in order to be able to go out with enough confidence. But that's why it is good to pretend to be someone else: we can hide our flaws.

Irving is so good at being a scammer, pretending to have connections to get money to those who have exhausted all their resources; because when he does it, he is that charming adventurer who hides underneath the overweight kilos and his real occupation: being the owner of a chain of laundries.

When he meets Sydney, a woman made freehand, like him, the crush is almost instantaneous because both are able to see under the guise of each other, but they do also know how exciting it is to disguise. They will become a great team until the FBI agent Richie DiMaso forces them, in order not to get them into prison, to put op a bigger act to allow them to catch the bigger fish. 

That 's roughly what David O. Russell intends to tell in American Hustle, using a group of very good players and focusing all the charm of the film on this group of actors playing roles that are outside of their ordinary scope. As if he wanted viewers also to fall under the charm of seeing Amy Adams , Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence being others.

Russell, who is also the scriptwriter, runs into several problems. The first is that not everyone gets their roles to be convincing. If the transformation is almost magical with Christian Bale and Amy Adams as Sydney, a combination of fire and ice; the one of Bradley Cooper is loud and hectic and pointless; while Lawrence, as Irving's dangerously slashing wife, goes into an overacting mode, to the point that you can almost see how fake it is. 

And that is because the actors do not have a strong script structure that supports them and have to come up with mannerisms where the plot turns out to be lacking. Russell is very good at revealing the complexity of human relationships and gets it done in a couple of scenes (such as when Irving and Sidney look into each other's eyes while being inside of the carousel full of dresses inside the laundry), but he does not have the same pulse to define the history of police and criminals. Why does the betrayal of a head of the mafia becomes little more than an unnecessary digression? Why does this story of four character always seem to include one too many, be it the wife or the FBI agent?

If some aspects of American Hustle, as the soundtrack narrating alongside, are a great emotional blow, others never pass the test, such as the camera movements following innocuous bland characters in insignificant situations. 

It is great that the same Russell, consistent with the spirit of its production, wanted to be someone else this time. But unfortunately, we cannot all be a Martin Scorsese.

Director: David O. Russell

Writers: Eric Warren Singer, David O. Russell

Stars: Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper