{"id":44711,"date":"2019-09-16T11:07:32","date_gmt":"2019-09-16T15:07:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=44711"},"modified":"2019-09-16T11:08:16","modified_gmt":"2019-09-16T15:08:16","slug":"hustlers-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2019\/09\/hustlers-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Hustlers Movie review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

By Bob Garver<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            We\nget a movie like \u201cHustlers\u201d about once a year. It\u2019s a story, told through\nnarration from the main character, about their role in a criminal operation,\nfrom its humble beginnings to its dizzying heights to its tragic downfall.\nScorsese\u2019s \u201cGoodfellas\u201d is the king of this genre, with the director\u2019s \u201cCasino\u201d\nand \u201cThe Wolf of Wall Street\u201d also prominent examples, along with recent\nentries like \u201cWar Dogs,\u201d \u201cAmerican Made,\u201d and to an extent, \u201cThe Mule.\u201d The\ndifference between those movies and \u201cHustlers\u201d is that those movies generally\nuse strippers as symbols of excess with barely any character. Here the\nstrippers are the main characters, but there\u2019s still plenty of excess. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Constance\nWu stars as Dorothy aka Destiny and about a hundred other nicknames. She talks\nto a journalist (Julia Stiles) about joining the NYC strip club circuit in\n2007, where she is taken under the wing of successful mainstay Ramona (Jennifer\nLopez). Together they earn big tips from wealthy Wall Street types and go on\nshopping sprees where they pay for everything in singles. There\u2019s a bit of a\nmoral and legal gray area when it comes to pushing for intoxicated patrons to\nspend more money, but guys don\u2019t want to go to the police to contest the bill\nat a strip club, so the women can fleece the men with relative impunity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then comes the\nfinancial crisis of 2008, which really hurts an industry dependent on the\ngenerosity of Wall Street scumbags. Dorothy and Ramona\u2019s income dwindles until\nthey\u2019re having trouble making ends meet. Ramona hatches a plan: she, Dorothy,\nand two other dancers (Keke Palmer and Lili Reinhart), rather than wait for men\nto come to the club, will go to bars and seduce them into coming to the club\nand spending money. At first, this seduction takes the form of traditional\nwiles like sweet talk and sex appeal. But as the well of marks dries up, the\nwomen have to resort to more drastic measures, specifically drugging. The\noperation gradually gets sloppier, with complications like unreliable cohorts,\ninjured marks, personal drama, dissention, and some guys actually minding that\nstrippers are stealing thousands of dollars from them. Like the housing market,\na collapse is inevitable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Basically the biggest\nproblem with the film is that it\u2019s overly familiar. Even though I came in with\nno knowledge of the real-life story that serves as the basis for this movie, I had\na pretty good idea of what beats the story would hit \u2013 how long the good times\nwould last, when things would start going south, when the characters would turn\non each other, etc. The only thing that really surprised me was how long the\ngood times lasted, but that just means that the movie goes too long without\nmuch-needed obstacles. Also, the stakes seem rather low for this kind of movie.\nI thought the women would be stealing tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of\ndollars at a time, but it\u2019s ones of thousands done many times. The legal\nconsequences are pretty miniscule as well, and the one violent sequence is not\nas dire as it first appears. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the appeal of\n\u201cHustlers\u201d lies not in its overall story structure or key plot points, but in\nits small moments, where we see the women bond and support one another. These\nare complex, flawed, well-written characters, with the term \u201cfleshed-out\u201d never\nseeming more appropriate. Simply spending time with these women and observing\ntheir chemistry is enough to make this a compelling film. And yes, the scenes\nwith Jennifer Lopez stripping only make the film more enjoyable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grade: B-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHustlers\u201d is rated R for pervasive\nsexual material, drug content, language and nudity. Its running time is 110\nminutes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver             We get a movie like \u201cHustlers\u201d about once a year. It\u2019s a story, told through narration from the main character, about their role in a criminal… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":44712,"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\/44711"}],"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=44711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}