This is a review of American Hustle (2013)
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16 January
This is a review of American Hustle (2013)
* Contains spoilers *
A Tarantino* could show us where this film starts and get us back there without it seeming the filmic equivalent of those 150 pages in
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall that are meant to be a night's reading and not interrupt anything : voice-overs at the opening from Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams) and Irving Rosenfeld [field of roses] (Christian Bale) seem like rare occasions when we hear what [they say that] they are thinking, and they jar with the rest of the film, since there is no reason, at this moment, for the characters to be confessional (it is not as if they are telling their story to the man who caught them).
It even feels like a false moment of insight, not least since the title (as well as what we have seen) tells us that these people are bunco artists (one thing that the early part of the film establishes is Prosser's quick wit, when she can work out where Rosenfeld's account of part of his business is going more quickly than he can tell her), so one doubts that either really has a love of Duke Ellington (Prosser knows a track, and he finds it, with a jaw-dropping view of his crotch as he listens to it), because the film then shuts us out from any such revelation. Nothing about how we brought back to where they started in the film feels original, or that it had to be shown / narrated that way (except that a distraught Rosenfeld goes into the interior of the rotary-hanging space where he had arbitrarily had a whirl with Prosser), and this seems an obvious place where the film could have been tighter.
When we get to the meat of the action, with a surprised Jeremy Renner (as Mayor Carmine Polito), who seems unsure whether he is related to Elvis, Liberace or both, it feels not so much as though Rosenfeld has been lucky to have managed to extricate the FBI agent, Richie diMaso (Bradley Cooper), but rather that there was never a coherent plan in the first place, beyond a swanky hotel suite and some cash in an attaché case. Beyond DiMaso manipulating his boss (one really feels sorry for Louis C. K. as Thorsen) and hiring the rooms, he seems nothing to do with this, and, when he makes things go wrong, Rosenfeld (maybe because he has done his homework) is able to build up a link with Polito based on shared upbringing : one supposes, not just for the plot, that the sting has to be brought back on track, although it reflects on DiMaso that it needs it.
In all this, and what happens for most of the film, what role, does Prosser have (in her British incarnation of Edith Greensley), other than engaging and distracting the subjects' attention with her variously displayed breasts (and draped legs) ? We do not see her setting up the mark, a job that is exclusively taken by Rosenfeld in guiding DiMaso. Other than getting the really big hit at the end, she seems there to defy one to believe how many of these outfits could really have been left at one of Rosenfeld’s dry-cleaning outlets, and how she can freak DiMaso out by revealing that she is not British (except that he is fixated with his own beliefs).
The dynamic is only made interesting by the fact that she has led DiMaso on and got him so that he is desperate to sleep with her at the time of the revelation – obviously, it does not have to be spelt out, but it does not seem, to judge from their comments, any part of Rosenfeld’s and her plan, although it can coincidentally be exploited.
The answer is that it could be an approach of divide and rule : whilst Rosenfeld is working alongside and rubbing up DiMaso on one level, she is sizing up his seemingly unpredictable character from close up, stimulating and frustrating him, so that he will feel that he trusts her judgement better (and, crucially, forget that she is a poacher turned gamekeeper under compulsion). If that really is there is a plot-line, it is really rather submerged**, if it takes days of nagging at how and where, beyond sex, she is being employed in the film to find it...
The maverick agent is played for more fun and greater laughs by Mark Wahlberg (
2 Guns, though he also has a boss to be reckoned with), and
Hustle really takes itself too seriously : DiMaso talking to himself, as he muses whether Prosser should have had a bed and water, or whether he had planned that she should not, is grotesque as a throw-away. Even when we have (uncredited) Robert De Niro playing a decrepit but menacing gang boss Tellegio against a fake sheikh from Mexico with just a few phrases to his name, the tension in the scene (from De Niro’s sheer presence, and notwithstanding all those jokey roles that he has played of late) weighs against the humour, or seeing it as another
Argo (2012), dangerous but cunning : here, it just seems dangerous, and how on earth do the Mexican’s few utterances really extricate them from anything ?
Almost the best sequence in the film originates from Jennifer Lawrence as Rosenfeld’s wife Rosalyn, having met a new mob boyfriend at the same do, and singing and dancing to ‘Live and Let Die’ whilst imagining his obliteration. The potential for conflict, particularly comedic, between Adams and Lawrence has largely been lost, and it is thrown back on the latter to play the part of revealing what she should not know and the others’ damage limitation. Rosenfeld may just have written her off as depressed and never leaving the house where he provides every comfort, and precious little keeps them together, but she shows no sign of a disposition to such a mood (for what it's worth,
Wikidepia calls her 'his unstable wife Rosalyn', when DiMaso is far more unstable) when keen to go out and socialize with Polito and his wife.
If, for some, the film offers variety and a mix of moods, from another point it lacks cohesion, and, whilst some may not mind whether it inconsistently concerns itself with Prosser as Prosser, rather than as advancing the plot, it does not obviously show that there is a scheme behind the rather loose plot : planting a surprise when we have been lulled into a notion that all is just adrift is not exactly showmanship…
End-notes
* Much as it might want it, though, this film never has his deftness of touch, his boldness with structure and character.
** According to
Wikidepia, it is not :
Richie believes Sydney is British but has proof that her claim of aristocracy is fraudulent. Sydney tells Irving she will manipulate Richie, distancing herself from Irving
Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
