American Hustle reviews

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Re: American Hustle reviews

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ITALIANO wrote:
Mister Tee wrote: This is precisely the mode in which most of the great movies of the 70s were conceived and executed
Well but there is a difference between, say, A Clockwork Orange and Nashville AND The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook... For this last movie at least the words "populist entertainment" don't seem too far from the truth (The Fighter was more on the harmless side).

I haven't seen Huckabees though. And I know, of course, that David O. Russell can be good. He was, in the past. So I have some hopes for American Hustle.
You've selected out two films that, in narrative terms, pushed the envelope in the 70s. I'm thinking of The French Connection, The Last Picture Show, The Godfather, Cabaret, American Graffiti, Chinatown, Dog Day Afternoon, All the President's Men -- movies that worked within time-honored genres but elvated them by the work done within them. I'd argue that's what Russell (and the other directors I mentioned) do all the time.
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Re: American Hustle reviews

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Mister Tee wrote: This is precisely the mode in which most of the great movies of the 70s were conceived and executed
Well but there is a difference between, say, A Clockwork Orange and Nashville AND The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook... For this last movie at least the words "populist entertainment" don't seem too far from the truth (The Fighter was more on the harmless side).

I haven't seen Huckabees though. And I know, of course, that David O. Russell can be good. He was, in the past. So I have some hopes for American Hustle.
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Re: American Hustle reviews

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I (like) Huckabee's as well. In fact, I pretty much like all of Russell's films. Three Kings was an especial favorite (though I thought it sagged narratively in the final reel), but I like the recent two a whole lot, and I don't see it as some descent into "populist entertainment" (a phrase apparently meant to make me shudder). For me, Russell -- like a whole lot of my contemporary favorites (Fincher, Jonze, Payne, Ang Lee, Cuaron) -- work in what Soderbergh has called mainstream cinema with an auteurist sensibility. This is precisely the mode in which most of the great movies of the 70s were conceived and executed; it amazes me to hear it referenced as if it were some kind of sell-out.
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Re: American Hustle reviews

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I also like Huckabees, The Fighter and still his best film to date Flirting with Disaster. Not looking forward to American Hustle but it's hard to imagine that it could be anywhere near as bad SLP.
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Re: American Hustle reviews

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Allow me to reveal myself as apparently the only one on earth who really likes Huckabees. (Hey, some of you like Showgirls, so why not?) I'm at a loss as to why it has such a negative reputation. It's very much of a piece with the rest of his work, it's no less intelligent or well-made than the others, I think its skewering on how abstract ideas become camps of thought gone overboard is dead-on. And it has a great comic cast. Had Woody Allen wrote the same screenplay, it would have been critically hailed. Maybe it comes off as too precocious, I don't know. But I do know I prefer Huckabees over anything Wes Anderson has made.
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Re: American Hustle reviews

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Is there a director working today who hasn't gone from challenging filmmaker directly to populist entertainer perhaps only out for getting an Oscar and then eventually seguing into unchallenging mediocrity? I'm thinking we could call this the Ridley Scott maneuver?
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Re: American Hustle reviews

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I, too, liked Flirting With Disaster; Three Kings and The Fighter, but hated I Heart Huckabees and Silver Linings Playbook. The reviews of American Hustle, though, make it sound like something more along the lines of Flirting With Disaster than Silver Linings Playbook. I am looking forward to seeing it.
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Re: American Hustle reviews

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Sabin wrote:More to write tomorrow but those on this board who [inexplicably] hated Silver Linings Playbook are going to be very annoyed at this movie and its success at the Oscars. I can't quite say I'm over the moon for it, but it's a total blast.
I was very fond of Flirting with Disaster and Three Kings and found The Fighter to be mostly respectable (as far as that Hackabees one, I’ll abstain, if you don’t mind). I actually think Russell is a talented film maker, yet I guess I’m one of those you consider as haters of SLP, which, indeed, I felt was an extremely misguided piece. What does it say about my future reaction to American Hustle?
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Re: American Hustle reviews

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Sabin wrote:More to write tomorrow but those on this board who [inexplicably] hated Silver Linings Playbook are going to be very annoyed at this movie and its success at the Oscars. I can't quite say I'm over the moon for it, but it's a total blast.

Waking up and reading this doesn't exactly make for a very optimistic start of a day.
Last edited by ITALIANO on Thu Dec 05, 2013 9:45 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: American Hustle reviews

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More to write tomorrow but those on this board who [inexplicably] hated Silver Linings Playbook are going to be very annoyed at this movie and its success at the Oscars. I can't quite say I'm over the moon for it, but it's a total blast.
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Re: American Hustle reviews

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And, Screen International.

American Hustle

4 December, 2013 | By Tim Grierson

Dir: David O. Russell. US. 2013. 129mins

American Hustle is a movie about the guises we wear to construct new, better versions of ourselves, so it’s fitting that director David O. Russell’s conman comedy-drama is itself an elaborate dress-up, savouring its retro-1970s costumes and hairdos while also gleefully riffing on the freewheeling energy of Martin Scorsese’s mobster films. Regretfully, there’s a certain amount of easy mocking of period detail that the audience must endure, but on the whole American Hustle manages to be several things at once: a briskly entertaining caper, a thoughtful examination of the American tendency toward reinvention (and self-delusion), and a tricky love story between two odd ducks played beautifully by Christian Bale and Amy Adams.


As for Adams, this is some of the best work of her career, dropping her good-girl image for a convincing portrayal of a woman whose abundant sex appeal and seeming toughness mask deep loneliness.

Opening December 13 in the States, this Sony offering is well-positioned for awards consideration, but the film’s overt ‘70s style, starry cast (which also includes Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence), and crowd-pleasing sheen could make American Hustle a box office contender as well. Good reviews and a robust marketing campaign will put American Hustle on the radar of plenty of moviegoers, as will the fact that Russell is coming off two sizable hits, The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook.

Set on the East Coast in the late ‘70s, American Hustle takes its inspiration from Abscam, a political-corruption investigation overseen by the FBI that led to the arrests of congressmen and other public officials. A heavily fictionalized account of the operation, American Hustle focuses on the travails of Irving Rosenfeld (Bale), a small-time conman, and Sydney Prosser (Adams), a beautiful woman who falls for him, adopting a British accent and a fake name to be his second-in-command on his scams to bilk suckers out of their money through get-rich-quick schemes.

But after Irving and Sydney are busted by ambitious FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper), they avoid prison time by reluctantly agreeing to run cons for the government that will ensnare crooked politicians. Their undercover work brings them into contact with Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner), a goodhearted New Jersey mayor who needs money for a valuable municipal project and steps into these scam-artists’ trap.

Russell, who co-wrote the screenplay with Eric Warren Singer, has envisioned American Hustle as a movie that both satirizes and sympathises with its deeply flawed characters. With his pathetically elaborate comb-over and toupee, Irving clearly aspires to a level of sophistication he doesn’t possess, while Sydney (with her stunningly revealing outfits) imagines herself to be far classier than she really is. American Hustle laughs at their pathetic self-deception, but the movie is also cognizant of the fact that, for them, it’s not self-deception: Through their love for each other, Irving and Sydney see the better versions of themselves that they’re trying to become, no matter how unattainable that might seem to the outside world.

That theme of reinvention reverberates throughout American Hustle: Just about every character is trying to convince everyone (including themselves) that they’re more than what they are. Irving’s wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence) fancies herself a wise old soul even if she’s a bit of a dingbat, while Richie seeks to become a major force in the FBI even though he’s far too temperamental. (Even Carmine, the least corrupt or deluded character, gets involved in Irving and Sydney’s scam because he wants to bring more jobs to his beloved city and boost its self-esteem.)

But Russell hides his characters’ pathos underneath a deceptively breezy, energetic surface that’s shot with rich vividness by cinematographer Linus Sandgren. Reminiscent of the panoramic sweep of Scorsese epics like Goodfellas and Casino (with a dash of Paul Thomas Anderson’s equally ’70s-retro Boogie Nights thrown in as well), American Hustle incorporates occasional voiceover and familiar period-specific song choices on the soundtrack to evoke an era but also give a grandness to the story.

This technique has its downsides: Russell’s desire to deliver a rollicking, nostalgic entertainment can make his movie seem derivative and glib. (American Hustle is the sort of period film where the audience is cued to chuckle smugly at the characters’ amazement at now-household items like a microwave.) But the confidence of the filmmaking is such that Russell gets away with his showboating style — particularly because his characters’ clear emotional longings are so apparent amidst the ‘70s razzle-dazzle.

Despite his tacky suits and unfortunate hair, Irving comes across as a wounded dreamer, the kind of two-bit hustler desperately trying to con other people so that he can convince himself that he’s not as miserable as he fears he is. Bale provides Irving with a core of neediness and vulnerability that’s quite touching, humanising what could be a fast-talking-weasel caricature. As for Adams, this is some of the best work of her career, dropping her good-girl image for a convincing portrayal of a woman whose abundant sex appeal and seeming toughness mask deep loneliness.

American Hustle perhaps puts too much stock in its con-artist plot — Irving is scheming how to outfox Richie, and Sydney pretends to be in love with Richie so that she and Irving can manipulate him (which, of course, will eventually begin to resemble genuine love) — but Adams is a wonder at revealing Sydney’s steeliness as well as her tenderness. Sydney and Irving are so perfectly matched because they believe they can stumble into a better life together, and Bale and Adams have a sweet chemistry that undercuts the easy mocking such foolish characters could arouse.

After winning an Oscar for her nuanced, deeply felt performance as an emotionally unstable widow in Silver Linings Playbook, Lawrence simply lets it rip as Irving’s exasperating, overbearing New Jersey wife. Flaunting plenty of sass and curvy sensuality, Rosalyn is all attitude, but impressively Lawrence transcends clichés for a funny, assured performance. (And there’s also some nuance in there as well, as witnessed by Rosalyn’s difficult encounter with Irving’s new soul mate Sydney.) And Lawrence’s Silver Livings Playbook co-star Cooper strikes the right balance between ridiculous and grounded as a fashion-conscious FBI agent who sees this sting operation as not just a fast-track for his career but also a way to land the gorgeous Sydney.

Like everyone in American Hustle, Richie has dated hair and a garish wardrobe, and while the movie spends a little too much time finding such cultural relics adorable, the commitment of Cooper’s performance suggests that Richie, like the other characters, is grabbing onto exterior forms of approbation to make themselves whole. They’re conning each other, but maybe also themselves.
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American Hustle reviews

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Had we seen these earlier, yesterday might not have come as such a surprise.

Hollywood Reporter

American Hustle: Film Review
9:00 AM PST 12/4/2013 by David Rooney

The Bottom Line
An infectious blast of funky jazz played by a terrific cast and a director at the top of their respective games.

David O. Russell reunites with Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence in this '70s-set tale of con artists roped into a corruption crackdown, along with the director's new recruit Jeremy Renner.

In The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook, David O. Russell hit a bracing mid-career groove in which his idiosyncratic stamp as a director injected distinctive rawness and emotional vitality into what in other hands might have been merely conventional movies. He continues on that roll of refreshing character-driven storytelling with the outrageously entertaining American Hustle, a twisty con-job chronicle that combines heightened dramatic stakes with playful humor, subversive sexiness and fabulous 1970s style. Fueled by invigorating performances from a zesty ensemble often cast against type, this looks like a winner for Sony.

Written by Eric Warren Singer and Russell, the film is a fictionalized account of the Abscam scandal, an East Coast FBI sting operation that went down in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. It resulted in a number of public officials being convicted on corruption charges, including several congressmen and high-level political operatives.

As indicated by the opening tag, “Some of this actually happened,” Russell makes no claim of adhering to those events. He carries on exploring the affinity evident in his last two features for characters at difficult junctures working to reinvent themselves. What gives this film its teasing pleasure is that almost everyone, on both sides of the law, is to some extent an ambiguous hustler, promising one thing and delivering another, sometimes with multiple hidden agendas.

The vicarious enjoyment of being bad that American Hustle provides gives it a vague kinship with Goodfellas, while its buoyant narrative energy and disco-era setting recall Boogie Nights. Dexterously plotted and laced with choice dialogue, the film is a crime drama infused with the spirit of a caper comedy, its frisky insouciance at times not unlike Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven remake.

There’s a lot of great hair in this movie but none more transfixing than the carefully sculpted comb-over worn by Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale), which we watch him construct in a process involving glue, a fake thatch and a thick coat of Elnett. That hilarious opening sequence also establishes the walking paradox of paunchy Irving, whose personal style seems at odds with a breezy confidence that allows him to scam just about anyone.

It’s precisely that quality that attracts Sydney (Amy Adams), a knockout former stripper from New Mexico, who likes to pass herself off as Lady Edith, a Brit with London banking connections. That alias comes in handy as the lovers lure patsies into a fake loan scheme, collecting five grand a pop. But Sydney/Edith makes a bad call when she reels in Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper), an ambitious Fed. He coerces Sydney and Irving into helping him nail some heavyweight white-collar targets, promising that four significant arrests will clear their slate.

Sydney wants to flee the country, but Irving remains too tied to his messed-up, manipulative wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence), whose son from a previous relationship he has adopted. When Sydney informs Irv that she intends to get close to Richie for insurance, she is acting out of jealousy as much as self-protection.

They identify a likely mark in Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner), a New Jersey mayor known as “the working man’s friend.” Frustrated at the difficulty of raising money to redevelop Atlantic City and eager to generate income and jobs for the state, Carmine gets pulled into a web of bribery and corruption, dragging other politicians in with him. Seed money from a fake Arab sheik (Michael Pena) serves as bait, also drawing the interest of Florida-based Mobsters looking to grow their gambling empire.

These are juicy, garrulous characters and Russell has lovingly contoured them to fit actors who have been lucky charms for him in his recent work. As well as Bale and Adams from The Fighter, and Cooper and Lawrence from Silver Linings Playbook, another of that film’s alumni, Robert De Niro, turns up unbilled in an amusingly tense negotiation scene as a lieutenant of Meyer Lansky. New recruit Renner is a wonderful addition to this core group, doing his best work since The Hurt Locker.

Bale is outstanding, his commitment to the central role going far beyond the weight gain and slouchy posture. Irving is an inscrutable shyster for sure, but one with both a conscience (he balks at going after politicians while America is still hurting from the disillusionment of Watergate and Vietnam) and a complicated set of personal loyalties, acutely revealed when he establishes a genuine friendship with Carmine. This helps makes Irv, against all odds, someone in whom we find ourselves investing.

Russell has a knack for capturing the exhilarating moment in which the characters’ bonds are cemented – Irv and Carmine carousing to Tom Jones’ “Delilah” at the end of a boozy night out; Irv and Sydney dizzy in each other’s arms while the garment rack of a dry-cleaners store (one of his core legit businesses) whirls around them; Sydney and Richie boogieing on a dance-floor, with a nod to the film’s title in a step or two of the Hustle.

Sporting a ridiculous home perm and a Tony Manero wardrobe, Cooper has never been funnier or more manic. Motor-mouth Richie’s anxiousness to avoid being trapped behind a desk leads him to all kinds of unwise decisions, making him as shady as Irv or maybe more so. And Renner, with a magnificent pompadour, gives the film a welcome dose of poignancy. A breed of mensch rarely encountered in Irv’s circle, he’s a thoroughly decent if somewhat gullible family man, heartbroken to learn he’s been nudged down the wrong path.

As for the ladies, Adams is sensational in rare bad-girl mode. Poured into costume designer Michael Wilkinson’s deep-plunge disco gowns, wrapped in a skimpy macramé swimsuit or a ton of fur, she has the looks and the innate savvy of an operator more than capable of stringing along two men while keeping us guessing about her ultimate intentions.

The film’s stealth weapon, however, is Lawrence. Hot off The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, she steals every scene in her limited screen time. Whether blithely blowing up a microwave or lip-syncing to “Live and Let Die” while furiously doing some housecleaning, Rosalyn is dangerously off-kilter but also shrewd; she’s both kitten and tigress. Crowned by an updo of cascading curls, she’s a sublime modern take on a quintessential screwball figure, never at fault in her own mind no matter how badly she blunders. Her ladies-room confrontation with Sydney is among the film’s high points.

Down to the smallest roles this is a brilliantly cast movie full of incisive characterizations, the most notable of them from Louis C.K. as Richie’s by-the-book FBI supervisor Stoddard Thorsen. While the comic was underused in Blue Jasmine, the prickly exchanges between Stoddard and his increasingly out-of-control agent are gems, particularly when Stoddard’s glory-hound boss (Alessandro Nivola) starts undermining him.

Russell and cinematographer Linus Sandgren don’t go in for lots of fancy camera moves, instead keeping the sharp widescreen compositions firmly focused on the characters. Similarly, period recreation from production designer Judy Becker and costumer Wilkinson is richly detailed and loaded with trashy-flashy glamor, without drawing attention away from the players. Three editors, Jay Cassidy, Crispin Struthers and Alan Baumgarten, are credited with compressing the lively story and its multiple character arcs into two-hours-twenty that never drags. Even at its most chaotic, the narrative remains fluid.

A key element is the energizing use of music, perfectly attuned to every turn the action takes. Danny Elfman’s cool connective score follows the lead of the Duke Ellington number "Jeep’s Blues," smoothly integrated into a killer collection of cocktail tunes, brassy jazz and primo ‘70s nuggets that includes tracks from Chicago, America, Jeff Lynne, Steely Dan, Donna Summer, Elton John, David Bowie and the Bee Gees. Oh, and extra points for using the Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes original of “Don’t Leave Me This Way,” instead of the heard-to-death Thelma Houston redo.



Variety

A brilliant cast shines in David O. Russell's deliriously funny account of the notorious Abscam case.

Justin Chang
Chief Film Critic@JustinCChang

You’ve seen smoother, more elegant con movies than “American Hustle,” but probably none quite so big-hearted or so rudely, insistently entertaining. As directed by that master of modern farce, David O. Russell, this sprawling fictionalized account of the notorious Abscam case is less a dramatic FBI procedural than a human comedy writ large, ringing a series of screwball variations on themes of duplicity and paranoia against a dazzling ’70s backdrop. Deliriously funny and brilliantly acted by a cast of Russell returnees, the film is also overlong, undisciplined and absent the sort of emotional payoff that made “Silver Linings Playbook” so satisfying, which could affect its otherwise solid theatrical prospects. Still, this star-studded Sony prestige release is a near-continual pleasure to spend 135 minutes with, repeatedly hitting that comic sweet spot where corruption and buffoonery collide.

After putting his sharp but crowd-pleasing stamp on the boxing drama with 2010’s “The Fighter” and the romantic comedy with last year’s “Silver Linings Playbook,” Russell has taken appreciable risks with “American Hustle,” as he and co-screenwriter Eric Warren Singer (“The International”) chart a shaggy, meandering journey across a sweeping and colorful true-crime canvas. Notably, this is Russell’s first foray into period filmmaking (not counting his First Gulf War drama “Three Kings”), and he and his collaborators — particularly production designer Judy Becker, costume designer Michael Wilkinson, composer Danny Elfman and above all music supervisor Susan Jacobs — have hurled themselves into their mid-’70s New Jersey milieu with a palpable delight in the garish excesses of the era.

Loud fashions and outsized shades abound from the first scene, in which paunchy, middle-aged Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) fusses with an elaborate hairpiece — a perfect intro to a movie about the joy and, for these professional tricksters, the necessity of donning false identities. The screenwriters may have changed their characters’ names to protect the not-so-innocent (“Some of this actually happened,” notes an opening title card), but knowing viewers will recognize Irving as a stand-in for Mel Weinberg, a Long Island scam artist who joined forces with the FBI to avoid prison time. Out of that unlikely partnership emerged Abscam, an audacious sting operation that pushed federal undercover work to controversial new levels of manipulation and entrapment, resulting in the bribery convictions for seven congressmen and various other government officials in 1981.

Given Russell’s instinctive affection for loudmouths, outcasts and head cases, it’s neither a surprise nor a stretch for him to identify with Irving, a relatively honorable small-time hustler and a sort of dilettante among frauds: He owns a legit dry-cleaning business but moonlights as an art forger and loan shark, bilking desperate applicants out of a few thousand dollars at a time. But things change when he falls hard for smart, beautiful redhead Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams), an unlikely kindred spirit who, adopting the seductive, worldly alias of a British businesswoman named Lady Edith, swiftly moves Irving’s scam into the big leagues.

Irving is married (more on that later), but he and Sydney/Edith make such splendid, sexy partners in crime that they soon draw the attention of ambitious FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper, rocking a dark brown perm), who catches them mid-fraud and strongarms them into working undercover for the bureau. It’s typical of the film’s topsy-turvy moral universe that Richie comes across as no less shady, demented or reckless than his reluctant informants, throwing caution to the wind — and riling his straight-laced boss (a wonderfully surly Louis C.K.) — as he strives to root out corruption in high places, even if it means planting the means and opportunity himself. Soon Richie’s using Irving to target Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner), the popular mayor of Camden, N.J., by dangling a $2 million foreign investment that will supposedly help rebuild Atlantic City’s casino-resort scene.

If all that sounds complicated, “American Hustle” is just getting warmed up. To maintain a convincing front, Richie presses the Bureau for cash while Irving invents a deep-pocketed Arab sheikh (actually a Mexican-American FBI agent played by Michael Pena), momentarily rousing the suspicion of one of Carmine’s more dangerous associates, Victor Tellegio (Robert De Niro, in a terrific one-scene cameo that introduces the film’s sole moment of pulse-quickening menace). But it soon becomes clear that the chief threat to their survival isn’t Tellegio but Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence), Irving’s outspoken, irrepressible loon of a wife, whose intense jealousy of Sydney and insistence on getting her way threaten to topple the whole operation.

Rosalyn may be no con artist, but it’s Lawrence who steals the picture, giving another marvelously unpredictable performance in an entirely different key from that of her Oscar-winning turn in “Silver Linings Playbook” (or, needless to say, her starring role in “The Hunger Games” franchise). Of all the fine actors returning from that “Playbook” (Cooper, De Niro) and “The Fighter” (Bale, Adams), Lawrence is the one who feels like the purest embodiment of Russell’s ethos, a natural-born comic spitfire whose lightning shifts in mood and flashes of temper suggest unfiltered emissions from the writer-director’s subconscious. Brazenly flirting with mobsters one minute and setting the kitchen on fire the next, Rosalyn is ferocious, maddening and impossible not to love.

She isn’t, however, the only big personality who occasionally yanks the film away from its predetermined course, assuming such a course existed to begin with. On some level, Russell and Singer haven’t fully cracked the story here, much less figured out the most focused way to tell it; those hoping for a dry, meticulous version of the Abscam narrative should stick to Wikipedia. But although it’s not without its drawbacks — namely, a lack of tension over the long haul and an abrupt, dramatically soft conclusion — this exaggerated human-circus approach feels like the right one for a true-life saga of such absurd, outrageous proportions.

In film after film, Russell doesn’t just flirt with disaster but courts it openly, positioning his characters in precarious, pinball-like configurations and letting them fly, his sympathies alighting on each of these lovable losers in turn. (There are no heroes or villains here, and no dominant protagonist, either, as evidenced by the way the voiceover keeps shifting from one character to the next.) A bromance of sorts brews between Carmine and Irving, who feels guilty about setting up his new friend for a nasty public fall, especially as the unsuspecting mayor unwittingly does the same for his high-ranking pals. Meanwhile, Sydney and Rosalyn clash over Irving (in a memorably heated faceoff that stops just short of a catfight), even as Sydney finds herself mysteriously drawn toward Richie.

But the sexual tension between federal agent and femme fatale is held in check by their mutual distrust, each suspecting the other may be playing them for a fool — a push-pull dynamic that makes “American Hustle,” among other things, a heartfelt inquiry into the allure of false fronts and the universal need to be loved for one’s true self. In that respect, there’s a dash of Preston Sturges’ “The Lady Eve” (Adams’ on-and-off British accent plays like an homage to Barbara Stanwyck) in a picture that otherwise suggests an Altmanesque spin on “The Sting.” If the result can feel like as much of a mess as that description implies, it’s a rich, glorious mess, and its underlying craftsmanship is apparent in the characters’ beautifully delineated relationships, each with its own jangly rhythm and distinct feel.

Much of the credit goes to the actors at the core of the ensemble, delivering performances with the improvisatory swing and expert timing of a great jazz quintet. Bale, who drastically slimmed down to play boxer Dicky Edlund in “The Fighter,” has gone to the opposite extreme here, packing on a few pounds and looking almost unrecognizable behind his aviator sunglasses and unflattering combover. Showing a warm and surprising restraint in the role of a madly inventive grifter, henpecked husband and loving adoptive father (to Rosalyn’s son), the actor is increasingly called upon to fill the story’s moral center as the stakes and shenanigans around him escalate.

As Irving’s rival, captor and ally, Cooper (whom Russell can’t resist showing with his hair full of pink curlers) gives a bristling, energetic turn that makes clear Richie’s own love for the swindle, while Adams holds her own as the shrewd yet vulnerable scammer whose emotional indecision plays a crucial role in the story’s twisty outcome. As the film’s biggest patsy (modeled on former Camden mayor Angelo Errichetti), Renner, in his best performance since “The Town,” looks and sounds every inch the well-liked, well-fed Joisey Eyetalian.

If Russell wraps up this big show with more flair than finesse, the craft contributions boast plenty of panache, including Linus Sandgren’s fluid, mobile widescreen camerawork and the dynamic editing by Jay Cassidy, Crispin Struthers and Alan Baumgarten, always finding interesting visual and rhythmic entry points into a scene. From the men’s plaid sports jackets and honkin’ bowties to the shimmery, plunging-neckline number worn by Adams in a crucial sequence, Wilkinson’s fantastic costumes revel in the possibilities of the milieu. But nothing sets the mood as thoroughly as the soundtrack, overflowing with jazz standards and ’70s hits, and at one point using Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” to particularly hypnotic effect.

The picture establishes a playful attitude toward its own period stylings at the outset with not just a restored 1978 Columbia logo, but also amusingly trippy faux-gos created for Atlas Entertainment and Annapurna Pictures.
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