Film Review - American Hustle (2013)

American Hustle is directed by David O. Russell and stars Christian Bale as Irving, a conman with a wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence) and a mistress Sydney (Amy Adams), Irving and Sydney come into contact with FBI agent Richie (Bradley Cooper) as they team up to take on mayor Carmine (Jeremy Renner) who Richie suspects is corrupt.

Before I dive into my overall thoughts on the film I want to tell you the tale of getting to see the film, you see I had booked my regular film going trip to see the film on Dec 12th which is when it opened and thought "yep this will be in and out" and sure enough, I got there did my usual thing and went to the theatre to see the movie, nothing sinister.

But alas I was told when I got there that the session I was to go to had been cancelled due to a special end of year school trip to see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, needless to say I was not happy about it at all and part of me wanted to break down and cry as it's been a real hassle for me to get to new release films as the trip can take up to 3 hours or so but alas that was the hand I was dealt.

But I said to myself as I did the Bus trip home I swore to myself that I would go back to see it and I enacted on my pledge, no my sacred Oath to do it.

With all of that out of the way, how was the film now that I had finally gotten to see it?

Well sadly the film was very disappointing for a number of reasons but before I go into those I want to talk about what I did like about the film and that is firstly the film's soundtrack which really helps to set the tone of the late 70's and early 80's pretty well and a few of the tunes used had me enjoying myself, the second is the performances of the two lead actresses Adams and Lawrence, both of them absolutely nail their roles and Lawrence in particular shows that she truly is a star, part of me wanted to give her a great big cuddle during parts of the film and say "It's okay mate."

But as I said I was very disappointed in the film and I will outline in more detail why that is the case:

- Firstly the film's storyline feels very incoherent, watching it I got the sense that there was no engine driving this film along and by that I mean that there was no structure to the story to take you from the beginning to the end, it felt like a bunch of scenes edited together combined with voice over narration to help fill in the blanks.

- Secondly the male actors are all very weak I thought, most of the time all they seem to be doing is shouting either at the camera or at the other characters in the scene, Bale seems to be imitating Al Capone in the Untouchables as his speaking voice seems to be that quiet mumble, Renner fares a little better but doesn't really get much of a chance to spread his wings in his role and Cooper is just flat out weak here, given very little to do and his acting smacks of trying too hard to impress his co-stars, a shame.

- And lastly the use of the era for me is very mixed, now I love LOVE that era of the late 70's and 80's I mean you had the Star Wars Trilogy, the dawn of VHS, great music and more but here a lot of it feels artificial and doesn't really root you in that time period which Argo and Rush did do very well I thought and those films did make me think of that era.

But here it doesn't work very well and just seems like window dressing whereas a clever rewrite of the script could have very easily set the film in the modern day and that sounds very sad.

But I have another objection and this is primarily for the Australian readers, I REALLY REALLY REALLY wish that the old Roadshow logo from that time period (you know with the country of Australia in it and it had the blue streaks on it and the do do do do do do do do do do do do music played) had been used to open the film as the one that did was just the regular logo they use on their theatrical releases that they distribute it and for the most part fine that's fair enough.

But I couldn't accept it here as this was wanting to be an old fashioned film set in a specific time period and if you're going to do that then it has to be set with the logos and again Argo did this by using the old Warner Brothers logo to open the film whereas here it's just the regular old Roadshow logo and I was wanting the old one from that era to open this film.

Alas, American Hustle for me was a big disappointment for me and sadly despite some great songs and performances, I just can't quite bring myself to recommend it, 1 out of 5.