American Hustle

Film (2013)
Directed by David O. Russell

With Christian Bale (Irving Rosenfeld), Bradley Cooper (Richie DiMaso), Amy Adams (Sydney Prosser), Jeremy Renner (Mayor Carmine Polito), Jennifer Lawrence (Rosalyn Rosenfeld), Louis C.K. (Stoddard Thorsen)

Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) is a con artist who hooks up with Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams). They are involved in various scams until they get wrapped up with Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper), an FBI agent who gets them to help entrap bigger fish. There are lots of overlapping personal relationships and no one is ever sure who is being straight or not.

The real gem in this okay film is Christian Bale’s performance as Irving Rosenfeld, a schlubby Jewish con artist from Long Island. That this guy who played the totally buff Batman could not only add a pot belly but totally capture the gestalt of this character is amazing. The performance is stunning and barely shows any cracks during the entire two plus hours of this otherwise not terrible, but not particularly great, film. Bale is English and how he manages to get the Long Island accent and demeanor just so is quite something.

Jeremy Renner as Mayor Carmine Polito has a fabulous Bobby Darin head of hair and comes across well as the corrupt mayor of Atlantic City. Like Bale, he seems to comfortably inhabit his role here.

Amy Adams as Sydney Prosser, Rosenfeld’s partner in crime and romance, is also pretty good. This is the slinkiest and craftiest role I have seen her in and she lives up to it reasonably well. Her shifting of personas and accents is done fairly effectively, though her British accent is so subtle sometimes it is hard to distinguish. She conveys self-assured con artistry quite convincingly.

Robert DeNiro has a cameo as a mob boss and he brings back the old Vito Corleone vibe with assurance.

Jennifer Lawrence, who had given great performances in Winter’s Bone (2010), and in the recent David O. Russell film Silver Linings Playbook (2012), is not as well suited to her role here. She just seems too young and out of place to play the jaunty and sassily sexy wife of Rosenfeld.

Bradley Cooper (Richie DiMaso) has a deer in the headlights look through much of this film. It is hard to tell whether he is acting out of touch or whether his acting simply is out of touch. Whatever the reason, it is a weird performance. I also found his acting in Silver Linings Playbook somewhat stilted and not very convincing.

The script has its moments but is oddly put together in places. The direction attempts to be offbeat and creative, but, frankly, in many places, just seems strange. However, to whatever degree director David O. Russell helped to bring forth Bale’s great performance he is to be heartily congratulated.

The associations with the Abscam episode of the late 1970s and early 1980s are interesting, but the film is only loosely based on that history so it should not really be seen as an historic dramatization.

The best thing about this film, by far, is Christian Bale’s stunningly convincing performance.

– BADMan