Pay Attention

Rating: 9/10 (1 February 2014)

A film that polarises opinions, I see. I watched it cold, as it were, not having read any reviews before walking into the theatre, so I was able to see it without expectations or preconceptions.
It is about manipulation, about players playing, about situations spinning away from characters with their own agendas. FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) browbeats small-time con artists and lovers Irving Rosenfield (Christian Bale) and Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams) into helping him set up a sting designed to entrap corrupt politicians. Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner) is the streetwise but sincere political wheeler-dealer at the centre of the operation and Irving's wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence) is a wonderful wild card, an engaging loose cannon functioning as a kind of neurotic deus ex machina.
The direction (David O. Russell) chops up real-time and flashback action, post-modernist style. Much of the dialogue was apparently improvised, and it shows - in a good way. Jennifer Lawrence in particular comes out with several choice, laugh-out-loud lines, but you don't know which (if any) are hers and which come from the laptops of writers Russell and Eric Warren Singer. The interminable, episodic ice- fishing shaggy dog story of DiMaso's exasperated boss, Louis CK (Stoddard Thorsen) is almost certainly scripted and worthy of Lawrence Sterne.
The late-1970s setting is meticulously observed, from Bale's ludicrous oldest-swinger-in-town comb-over to the whalefin lapels to the many medallions nestling on hairy chests (Did we really dress like that in the 1970s? Er, yes). The starring chest of the film, while we're on the subject, is the one constantly over-exposed, from every angle, by Adams's navel-deep cleavage. (Insert your own golden globes joke here.) It actually got a bit distracting over the 138 minutes. But I survived somehow.
American Hustle is an ensemble piece with no clear-cut heroes or villains, no white-hat-black-hat dynamic, no good-girl-bad-girl dichotomy. The characters think they are being proactive but in fact they are reactive; they wobble on shaky ground, their tumultuous allegiances, expediencies and relationships swirling in confusion, emotions running high, sexual tensions at snapping point. Who's playing whom? Is anyone really pulling the strings? What's the real scam? There is no telling. Complication mounts on complication as Russell scatters expositional red herrings all over the screen, the big tease.
And therein lies the film's chaotic genius. Pay attention to it. American Hustle is a work that repays concentration. Hell, you've paid for your ticket, get your money's worth and engage. This is no glib, easy, sit-back-and-munch-your-popcorn caper movie; it is demanding and difficult. The actors' performances are utterly convincing, without exception, and the characterisation sufficiently excessive to be human - which is to say, the characters are realistically fallible, occasionally over the top, and often none too pretty. They mess up. They get things wrong when the situation runs away from them, and it is always running away from them. They're just like the rest of us.
I came away firmly on the pro- side of the polarity. I'll be buying the DVD so I can backtrack over the detail I missed. Recommended.