{"id":28927,"date":"2013-12-30T23:46:56","date_gmt":"2013-12-31T04:46:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=28927"},"modified":"2013-12-30T23:46:56","modified_gmt":"2013-12-31T04:46:56","slug":"american-hustle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2013\/12\/american-hustle\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cAmerican Hustle\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cAmerican Hustle\u201d is a movie about con artists, but it might as well be a movie about magicians or dreams. A movie about magicians (like \u201cNow You See Me\u201d) is going to wait until the last minute to clue you in on what the big trick really was. A movie about dreams (like \u201cInception\u201d) is going to wait until the last minute to clue you in on what was really a dream. And a movie about con artists like \u201cAmerican Hustle\u201d is going to wait until the last minute to clue you in on which characters are really conning the others. There\u2019s little point in getting invested in the story up to that point because you know it\u2019s going to get turned on its head by some twist at the end.<\/p>\n

This is not to say that it isn\u2019t worth becoming invested in other elements of the film like individual scenes or the performances. The film is directed by David O. Russell (\u201cThe Fighter\u201d and \u201cSilver Linings Playbook\u201d) and he has assembled an all-star cast for this outing. Four of the main actors (Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence) received Academy Award nominations for previous Russell films, two of whom (Bale and Lawrence) won. Keep in mind, that\u2019s just among the top-billed actors.<\/p>\n

The story follows professional con artist or \u201chustler\u201d Irving Rosenfeld (Bale). He\u2019s so charismatic that he has his partner Sydney (Adams) and wife Rosalyn (Lawrence) fighting over him even though he\u2019s doughy and puts a lot of effort into a hairpiece\/comb-over combo that isn\u2019t fooling anybody. Sydney gets busted by an FBI agent named Richie (Cooper) who agrees to release her if she and Irving use their skills to catch other criminals. They set out to trap a crooked New Jersey mayor (Jeremy Renner) and this leads to a larger plan to take down corrupt politicians and even high-value Mafia targets. You don\u2019t need to worry so much about who\u2019s bribing who as long as you\u2019re thinking about who\u2019s conning who. I suppose the winner is the ultimate hustler.<\/p>\n

Again, the appeal of the movie doesn\u2019t lie in the plot, it lies in the characters, especially the women. Sydney is such a skilled liar that the people who come closest to understanding her are the people who know that they will never understand her. But I think it\u2019s Rosalyn that people will most remember from this film. She\u2019s completely crazy (don\u2019t trust her around anything flammable) and this makes her the least likely to be lying because she\u2019s too crazy to get away with the lie. She reminds me of a Jack Sparrow quote from the first \u201cPirates of the Caribbean,\u201d \u201c\u2026a dishonest [person] you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly. It’s the honest ones you want to watch out for, because you can never predict when they’re going to do something incredibly… stupid.\u201d<\/p>\n

The characters and performances in \u201cAmerican Hustle\u201d are a lot of fun and it\u2019s a shame that they aren\u2019t part of a better movie. As it is, the film gets so bogged down in the complicated bribery storyline that it distracts from the intriguing character interactions that should be the focus. And then of course there\u2019s that nagging \u201cdon\u2019t trust anybody\u201d device that makes all the action and characters seem so distant. It\u2019s one thing for a story to make us wonder what twists lie ahead. It\u2019s another thing for a film like \u201cAmerican Hustle\u201d to make it obvious that a twist is coming at the last minute.<\/p>\n

Two Stars out of Five.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmerican Hustle\u201d is rated R for pervasive language, some sexual content and brief language. Its running time is 138 minutes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Contact Bob Garver at rrg251@nyu.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver   \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cAmerican Hustle\u201d is a movie about con artists, but it might as well be a movie about magicians or dreams. A movie about magicians (like… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28927"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28927\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}