Hollywood really needs to stop telling us these movies are gold

Rating: 1/10 (2 April 2014)

Along with Wolf of Wall Street, this movie got such a great deal of hype, not to mention Oscar awards, that I figured I'd give it a shot. Just like with Wolf of Wall Street, I was quite disappointed by it. The story itself seemed to just jump around all over the place, flashing from scene to scene before the first one was finished. The characters as well seemed very uneven as well, making emotional leaps and nosedives all over the place without any real clear reason why.
You have our two "leads", Christina Bale (who I can't take seriously anymore after Batman) and Amy Adams, that are very close one second, then hate each other the next, then are back in close again without any real explanations as to why. They are supposed to be very smart con artists, and yet they don't utilize any of their skills to get out of the jam, or even try to, until the absolute last five minutes of the movie. Not to mention their "chemistry" seemed more like distilled water as opposed to any kind of fiery heat. I honestly couldn't care less if they ended up with each other or not by the end of the movie. And as far as the "friendship" between Bale's character and Renner's character, I only have Bale's voice over to tell me about this, because other than when Renner's character discovers what Bale's really been doing do we see any real emotion regarding the relationship between these two. Oh yes, and we have the film opening things with a shot of Amy Adams' character being a stripper, something that is never even mentioned again. So my question is, why even bother telling the audience about it? It brought absolutely no weight to the movie and quite honestly I forgot about that tidbit about the character five minutes later. The same could be said about Bale's character. The movie opens with him talking about how he shattered windows so his father would get business for his glass company so he wouldn't get "taken" anymore. Exactly how was his father taken? It's never even explained. Was it done legally or illegally? And, of course, there's his dry cleaning business, which is essentially pointless to this movie other than being a set piece in the beginning for Amy Adams to have a fashion show. Even Bale's art scam was pointless, as it had nothing to do with the rest of the movie. Hell, the scam he and Adams come up with made absolutely no sense. It was never really explained. What exactly were their marks giving them $5,000 for to begin with. Was it an investment, was it supposed to be money laundering? We're never told.
You have the FBI agent (Bradley Cooper) who is so obsessed with going higher and higher up the criminal food chain that the entire character becomes a cartoon. When he beats the living hell out of his boss because he wouldn't give him an incredibly expensive hotel room for a sting operation, and is then given accolades by his boss's boss instead of being thrown out of the Bureau and charged with battery, at that point the whole movie had jumped the shark. And that's not even talking about his inexplicable use of cocaine in one scene that is never even hinted at again, regardless of his manic behavior throughout the movie.
Jeremy Renner did do a fine job in the role he was cast. The character seemed rather sincere and wasn't a typical dirty politician, which was just fine for this movie. I can't say I have any complaints about the character other than it and the actor were wasted on this film.
Jennifer Lawrence was fine, I suppose, though instead of being conniving and sneaky in her own loud way, she seemed like she was either a sociopath or someone with bi-polar disorder. Seriously, I doubt you'd have much trouble convincing a judge, even one from the late 70's, that she was in no condition to take full-time custody of her child.
Then there were the accents. I was actually OK with Adams' British accent. It wasn't great but it wasn't too terrible either. The problem I had is she was supposed to be from New Mexico and yet she would inexplicably shift into a New Jersey or New York accent when not using her British one. This is after, in the opening scenes, we hear her normal accent which sounds Midwestern. It just makes no sense. That and Alessandro Nivola, Bradley Cooper's boss's boss sounded like he was trying to do a Christopher Walken impression the entire movie.
About the only thing this movie had going for it was wardrobe, and by that I mean having the two leading ladies (more Adams than Lawrence) wear outfits that showed off their curves to the utter maximum without being vulgar for the entire movie.
Overall, I just found the movie to be pretty bad and find it very disheartening that this and Wolf of Wall Street are what is considered wonderful, powerful movies these days. It seems that the people in Hollywood really know their audiences now and know they can cram any kind of garbage down our throats, as long as their PR people tell us it's the finest cut of fillet. Do yourself a favor and skip this one, or if you have to watch it make sure you don't pay a dime to see it, it's a waste of your money.