Film Review - Hustlers (2019)

Hustlers is written and directed by Ms Lorene Scarfaria and stars Constance Wu as Dorothy a young girl who takes a job at a Strip Club and meets Ramona (Jennifer Lopez) who shows her the ropes and teaches her the moves but when the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 hits the two of them team up with 2 other strippers from the club to try and fleece their high profile Wall Street customers and live It up for themselves.

Hustlers for me is a movie that was a bit of a mixed bag, don’t get me wrong I don’t think it’s a bad movie not at all but it was one that really wasn’t for me the more I think about it.

To start with the positives Ms Lopez is great here, the best she has been in a pretty long time and watching her play Ramona really took me back to watching Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street where you have this veteran actor sinking their teeth into a great character and every time they appear on screen you just can’t take your eyes off them, I hope she will enter the Oscar race but again given the subject nature of the film I’m not 100% certain she will get the nod but I’ll be happy if she does.

And also I like the portrait of this group of women that Ms Scarfaria paints, they come across as a close knit group of sisters who are doing things for themselves while also building a bond between each of them and I really liked those moments in the film as well though I was a little disappointed in the 2007 moments that no one was wearing a Kevin Rudd T-Shirt given that story about him that year.

But alas there is a big weak link in this movie for me and its sadly Ms Constance Wu who after enjoying her work in Crazy Rich Asians last year is not very good in this role I’m afraid, a lot of the time she just came across as being a little out of her depth and I never really bought the emotional journey her character goes through and again to go back to the Wall Street comparison her role is comparable to the Bud Fox role Charlie Sheen played in that film, the green horn who joins the mentor on the wild ride and then comes to question it and say “How much is Enough?” and whereas Mr Sheen could keep up with Mr Douglas this just feels like someone else is playing that role and the Michael Douglas equivalent is just walking all over them and as a result I didn’t feel as invested in the story as I wanted to be.

And so that was Hustlers and it’s a perfectly fine film that has some great writing and performances especially by Ms Lopez but Ms Wu didn’t do much for me performance wise and while many of the women in my session were enjoying themselves yesterday I was not one of them but hey these things happen, 2 out of 5.