The Whores Hustle And The Hustlers Whore

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I was so totally into American Hustle for about ten minutes. Oh maybe it was longer than that, who can tell - its pointlessly fractured timeline, skittering back and forth inexplicably, keeps a person from keeping track (perhaps that's the point). But I remember thinking as the clothing racks tumbled around Amy Adams and Christian Bale, "Golly I'm charmed." Alas that wasn't to last - Russell's films are always loose shambling things but this one especially so, and not in the charming way I was hoping with those dry cleaner butterfly kisses. It's just kind of incoherent, sloppy - skittish and kind of lacking the propulsive spirit the zooming camera's begging for. Scorsese wrung out, hung to dry. I just wasn't there. 

But the ladies! Really all I want to talk about are the ladies. Like, can we talk about Amy Adams' magnificent accent work? A third-rate mangling of hoity toity faux-dame inflections that her character no doubt learned from Charlie's Angels or some similar already fraudulent shit - it shouldn't fool a single person hearing it but she knows all they're hearing is her impressive decolletage anyway - and she deploys it in such unexpected ways, as if it coming out of her mouth when it's coming out of her mouth surprises even her. Amy's awesome, making minxy magic out of a mess on the page. Jennifer Lawrence has less to work with still and just flies right off the rails, but it's usually super fun to watch anyway, til the movie half-asses out on her. And I was giddy every time Elizabeth Rohm was on-screen - I woulda happily wandered off to a spin-off following that pile of electric skunk around. 

Renner fares best out of the men but maybe I was just so happy whenever Rohm was on-screen (she's his wife) that I was projecting? Their last scene with the Benetton Brady Bunch is one of the funniest things Russell's filmed, anyway. Bale dials it down and leads with the gut, literally, but he's almost too pulled back.  And meanwhile Bradley Cooper's all coked-up lip-gnawing and hand-waving and go go go go, and if there's a less convincing crier making movies today I haven't found 'em. (But man I loved the scene at Studio 54 anyway.)

Anyway anyway, I suppose if Russell's point is people are incoherent (a point with which I tend to agree, slash live) then he made it, but it makes for a strangely limp "lively" film. All the beats feel pre-handled; molested. Paul Thomas Anderson did this better sixteen years ago with characters whose names I can conjure up right this second - I couldn't tell you the names of most of Russell's sad sacks only a week into American Hustle taking up space in my imagination.

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