Plot: In 1978, con artists Irving Rosenfeld and Sydney Prosser have start a relationship and develop a partnership in conning people. But eventually they are busted by an FBI agent named Richard "Richie" DiMaso, but he also offers to let them go in exchange for using their conning skills for other arrests that eventually include taking down some political people. This causes drama to Irvin and Sydney's relationship with them having trouble trusting each other, on top of Irving dealing with his wife, Roslyn and caring for his son, Danny.
Now I've heard kind of positive but generally mixed things about this movie. My dad and two of my siblings went to see it in theaters and thought it went way too long to the point where they eventually left the theater, and I saw Nostalgia Chick show a parody picture of the poster where the headline more or less says "It's a good movie...we think." Now is it actually a good movie? Yes. But do I also see where people seem to be coming from in terms of not entirely praising it at the same time? Uh...more or less, yes. But let's talk about what's good first. What really makes this a good movie is the performances. This film right off the bat gives us a great cast; Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Renner, even an uncredited appearance from Robert De Niro, and all of them give out terrific, energetic performances. They establish who these people are, what their goals are, what they're experiencing through this whole series of events, and they all do a fantastic job. Christian Bale does a great job with giving us a new character that you may notice at the beginning of the film, that he once again changes his body to get into the role. Amy Adams and Bradely Cooper do a great job in showing how their characters are having a deep conflict about their selves through the events of the film, and Jenifer Lawrence seem to get the most hype with her energetic performance as Roslyn. (By the way, am I the only one who finds it a little weird that this movie has Christian Bale and Jenifer Lawrence as a married couple? Especially considering how Bale is 40 and Lawrence is basically my age?) But even with the performances on top of the story itself being interesting, the movie does have some flaws. As I said, my dad and two of my siblings eventually left the movie being much to long. And while I personally never quite got that when I saw the movie, I will say that looking back, I will agree with them, as well as Jeremy Jahns that the film had too many things happening. In fact, it's possible that more stuff happened than I remembered happening (though I could be wrong). Granted, none of those moments for me felt like they were really dragging, because they still were giving us this great cast that was giving us all of these great performances the entire time. But I will say that some scenes where probably not needed because they seemed to have distracted me from what is happening to the main characters. Now the second problem, at least from my perspective is from a point Jeremy Jahns makes about this movie as a comedy. He says in his review for the film " If I didn't know that it was a comedy because it was nominated for a Golden Globe for a comedy, I would just think it was a hustle movie that has really awkward moments in it." And I pretty much agree with him because I had no idea that this was a comedy until I heard him say that in his review. Just from seeing trailers, pictures and the poster for the movie, it did not strike me as a comedy at all. So when I watched those moments where it was suppose to be funny, I may not have found them awkward per say, but as far as I was concerned, the movie was giving me moments like Bradely Cooper beating up his boss with a telephone that was just there to roughly move a part of the story along.
And that's my review for American Hustle. It somewhat has too many things going on in it, and the comedy doesn't work at all unless you watch it knowing it is a comedy, but aside from that, it still is an entertaining film with an interesting story, and great performances from a terrific cast. I can see why this movie did not really stand a chance against 12 Years A Slave for best picture, but it still is a nice energetic film that is entertaining enough film to see.
Rating: 80%
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