Unusually, I liked this film a lot.

Rating: 8/10 (9 January 2014)

This is the sort of film I'd usually go out of my way to avoid. I don't like crime capers, I find David O. Russell, Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Laurence totally over-rated, and I hate wobbly cameras (has the tripod industry gone bust?). My favoured type of films are science-fiction and animation. I went to see this almost entirely because of Christian Bale and especially Amy Adams, of whom I am a big fan - and even more especially because of her wardrobe in this movie :-) The 8/10 I've given it is therefore quite a big thing, since I reserve that for excellent sci-fi ...
This worked for me because it was intelligent, unpredictable, and some of the acting was truly first-class. It annoys me that some Oscar-worthy performances are going to be ignored just because there is a film about slavery out this year. Amy Adams and Christian Bale were, as ever, excellent, and it was good to see them stepping out of their traditional roles - Bale away from good-looking hard man to out-of-shape baldy with a lot of weak spots, and Adams from the cute good-girl to a knowingly sexy vamp. Bradley Cooper, on the other hand, was predictably awful: I do not see what anyone finds so good about this man. He is predictably one-dimensional, and seems to make no effort to get into a character. However, the revelation was Jennifer Laurence - I doubt I will ever like her, but she really showed that she can *act* in this movie! Her role as the shallow, manipulative wife showed that criminals are far from the worst type of person in the movie.
I know that some people are criticising the plot - well, for me, this is one of the solid points of the film. It reflected real life in that it wasn't tidy, people did things that might not have made total sense, and it meant that the ending could have gone any of several ways. I am delighted the team went for a happy ending, because for a while I was worried that the movie was going to do something I utterly detest - change from a light-hearted comedy to one in which a great deal of violence is inflicted on people. (Indeed, another category of movie I avoid like the plague is one in which violence is shown in real-life situations - I have not seen, and will never willingly see, "The Godfather" or "The Fighter" etc., for instance.) I was a little disappointed that there was some entirely gratuitous violence that went unpunished, since it did nothing to advance the plot (seriously, are we expected to believe that a law-enforcement officer can beat up and pull a gun on a senior officer and get away with it??) A final point of excellence is the soundtrack. It was good to hear some songs that are not usually heard in movies, and I'm especially pleased that Jeff Lynne will be raking in the royalties, since he is one of the most under-recognised musicians of the last forty years, in my mind (I think there are three tracks of his in the movie)! Overall, this was one of the best films I've seen for some time. I can see why it might have annoyed some people, and I don't know if I would actually have gone to see it if I didn't have a free ticket from my phone operator (thanks, Orange Wednesdays!), but it was worth the 2+ hours to discover something really special.