Movie Review

American Hustle 2013

This movie is set in the 70s with the typical music and cloths to suit.  The movie begins with Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) standing in front of a mirror, gluing his comb-over down to his scalp. Pretty bizarre, but it quickly goes from this and gives you a since of what the movie will be about when Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams) and Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) all come together and in an almost comical dialect, begin sparring off each other. 

The story jumps back to an earlier time before Richie met the other two, and gives a quick, but detailed view of the lives of Irving and Sydney and how they met.  They begin working together in a dodgy loan business where they take a non-refundable deposit for the promise of loan, but of course there never was a loan.  Richie DiMaso first appears as a new “customer” looking for money but it turns out he works for the FBI and uses the incriminating evidence to blackmail the pair into working with him. 

As the story goes on, it delves deeper into the life of Irving and we discover he has an adopted kid, whose mother had some hold over Irving.  One of the quotes that sticks out is of how Irving describes her as “The Picasso of passive aggressive karate”.  She has a bigger role to play as the movie goes on and with a description like this you might expect her to be entertaining but I found her irritating. 

Throughout the movie you get a feeling each are out to con each-other, but as the story unravels this feeling fades a little.  Without spoiling the movie for anyone else I will leave it there.

If I had to rate it out of 5, it would get 3.5  Anyway, enjoy.

Colm