American Hustle - quite a caper

Second cinema experience of the year already on Saturday, and with a few decent-looking trailers beforehand I think there might be a few more trips coming up.  The trailers for American Hustle did a good job of making me interested without giving any substantial clue on what the film was actually about.  Aside from it being some sort of hustle of course, I wasn't really sure what I was going to watch.  The reviews are pretty good all around though, and with that cast it didn't really seem to matter too much.  So it was that American Hustle became my second cinema experience of 2014 - only 4 days in!

Before we go any further, the most important talk about in American Hustle is the cast.  What a great cast!  Even though Christian Bale and Amy Adams play the lead roles, it's very much an ensemble with Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence and Jeremy Renner all giving captivating performances of very weird characters.  It's a film that's very much about characters, the deceptions they're each trying to pull on themselves and others and the effect that deception has on their lives.  The plot itself is about Bradley Cooper's federal investigator Richie DiMaso forcing the scamming duo of Irving Rosenfeld and Sydney Prosser (Bale and Adams) into working for the feds to entrap an increasingly large group of high-powered politicians who are on the take from shady businessmen and organised criminals.  As the circle of people DiMaso is trying to entrap becomes ever-wider, our scammers realise that it will be them rather than the FBI whom the mob come after when they find out they've been the target of an FBI sting.  So they'd better do something to cover themselves...

It's a film that's part crime-caper and part straight comedy set in the 1970s.  The opening scene invites us to watch Christian Bale awkwardly glue down an ageing comb-over before donning a terrible velvet jacket, before Amy Adams wanders in and unironically complements him on his appearance.  This sets the precedent for the rest of the film.  The attention to the detail of this 70s aesthetic is played for both comic and nostalgic kicks in the film.  From Bale's awful jacket to the garish colours of the opening credits to Bradley Cooper's chest hair and Jennifer Lawrence's inability to understand her newfangled microwave oven (or 'science oven' as she calls it) - it's the 1970s, a simpler age.

You would have to be watching this film with your eyes closed to not notice that there are a hell of a lot of boobs in it.  Almost every outfit Amy Adams is wearing reveals a lot, similarly so for Jennifer Lawrence when she gets out of her domestic setting.  Obviously there's nothing wrong with this, but it's a very clear demonstration of the cinematic trend that permits male leads to be chubby and have bad hair while our female leads must be pretty and ooze sex appeal.  Christian Bale and Bradley Cooper are both attractive guys, but the make up department for American Hustle does its best to play this down to comic effect (witness Bale's awful comb-over and much-expanded stomach - if ever there was an actor who gave their body up for their craft, it was Christian Bale).  Admittedly Amy Adams has a few scenes where she's made up to look a bit bedraggled, but that's definitely the exception rather than the rule.

One slight criticism would be that the film drags a bit in the middle.  Some scenes could have probably been trimmed even though they do add to the characterisation of the people involved.  It feels like you're coming to the end several times before you finally get the final denouement, but at no point did I ever feel bored or wish the end was coming.  It's 100% a caper in the original sense of it, everyone's out for themselves, no-one's trustworthy and the central relationship between the characters played by Bale and Adams is one in which you're never quite sure who are the scammers and the scammed.

Though American Hustle is a very enjoyable film I don't understand its extremely high rating at present on IMDB or the awards season talk that it seems to be getting.  Its plot is entertaining, its retro 1970s look is an amusing throwback and its cast it very good, but it's hardly Goodfellas (despite a number of moments when it really looks like it's trying to be a spoof of that film).  This is a very entertaining film that I should think anyone will enjoy, but the Academy should probably look elsewhere come Oscar season.