American Hustle

American Hustle is a fairly good, sorta fun movie, but how did it ever get nominated for Best Picture?  It's a jumble of great actors with funny hair having a blast delivering inconsistent performances while the scenery they haven't chewed up looks nice.  It reminds me very much of Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven remake (which garnered no Oscar nominations), except less fun.  But maybe that's the brilliance of American Hustle.  Maybe this movie about con men is, itself, a con.  It's all smoke and mirrors to fool you into thinking it's a great movie. 

The story is loosely based on real events.  A con man and his partner/mistress are put in a position where they must help the FBI or go to prison.  The plan to use con men to take down the mob soon involves taking down politicians.  The higher stakes of the plan are further complicated by a budding friendship with one of the marks, an FBI agent's infatuation, and an unstable, jealous wife.

A lot of hubbub has been made about the performances, which comprise four out of American Hustle's ten nominations.  With the exception of Amy Adams and Louis C.K. (and maybe Jeremy Renner), the acting is not very good.  The style of the film is heavily improvisational.  This works only when using actors skilled in improv.  Only Louis C.K. possesses this skill.  Adams and Renner just indulge in very little improvisation and come off the better for it.  Actors may be talented people but they need direction in order to deliver the best possible performance.  These actors are not being directed (so can we call bullshit on David O. Russell's nomination too?) leaving us with a film full of inconsistent/borderline-schizophrenic performances of which Bradley Cooper is the worst offender. (And if a movie is heavily improvised, can it really be nominated for Best Original Screenplay?)

The focus on manic, improv-ed performances ends up overshadowing the plot.  Con artistry (is that a term?) is inherently complicated.  The story requires delicate handling in order to juggle the information that is to be revealed and that which is to be obfuscated.  American Hustle's plot is a muddy mess of information.  The filmmakers couldn't care less about the actual events that propel the characters from one scene to the next.  Therefore, the film ends up just feeling like a collage of scenes.

I did like the return of some of David O. Russell's flashy camerawork.  It was missing from his last couple films.  And I really like Russell's work.  His film pre-The Fighter are incredible.  The Fighter is a fairly good, safe, and ultimately forgettable drama.  The Silver Linings Playbook is a fun romantic comedy masquerading as high art.  American Hustle is a hot mess.  But it's a sorta fun mess.

The movie fully deserved its complete shutout at the Academy Awards this year.  Watch it now, because it'll be gone from public consciousness within a few months.  American Hustle will be the movie you half-watch on a Saturday afternoon on TNT while you iron clothes or do dishes.

6 out of 10