New Jersey, The Garden of Evil State.

Rating: 5/10 (13 January 2015)

If you liked Martin Scorcese's work, especially "Casino," then you ought to love this one because the writer/director, David Russell, is to Scorcese as Brian De Palma is to Alfred Hitchcock. Not only is the plot redolent of "Casino" or "Goodfellas", but the techniques belong to the same family -- loud intrusions of 70s pop tunes, rapid dolly shots into someone's tense face during a crisis, the romantic troubles of the con man hero with his jealous wife and his smooth girl friend. There are narrative comments here and there by two of the actors.
Christian Bale is surprisingly good as the small-time New York Jew who promises to get desperate people a loan of fifty thousand dollars for an irrevocable fee of five thousand, then just keeps the five. Good accent, Chris. But he fades from view about a third of the way into the movie and has only minor functions until the last few minutes.
Amy Adams, as the very savvy phony English aristocrat who is swept up in Bale's schemes, is very, well, sexy although her innocent features seem to glow with the freshness of a Kansas sunflower. The director was courageous enough to give her a few scenes with her hair up in those ugly plastic curlers, while she wears no discernible make up. And, though pallid and washed out, she STILL looks pinchable.
Jennifer Lawrence, who has been in the news a lot lately, looks a little like the younger Leelee Sobieski, something in the slant of her eyes. Her character, the bitchy and conniving wife, was a surprise. I thought that someone whose celebrity depended partly on the hacking of some nude photos wouldn't have much juice, but she can act. She's not as radiant on the screen as Amy Adams but she's not supposed to be, what with her hair piled up into a pompadour, something resembling a fire plug on top of her head and her overall witchiness.
The plot has the confidence team of Christian Bale and Amy Adams being caught by the FBI in one of their transactions. The agent in charge is Bradley Cooper (who also curls his hair into little knots) and he sort of cons them into pulling their stunts on other illegals and on politicians so that he, Cooper, can make a big name for himself. Cooper does his best to keep his hands off Adams, but he manages to come out of the affair the most vile of the bunch. A touch of Sidney Lumet. (See Lumet's "Prince of the City" for a comparison.) But then, whatever interest the story and the performances had is drained by the imitative techniques, which go far beyond Martin Scorcese into some kind of decadent hell. The actors must have been told to improvise some bits of business because some of the exchanges sound exactly like improvised bits of business from other films.
Adams and Lawrence have a vicious exchange in the ladies' room. "You're all gross inside." "I'M all gross inside? YOU'RE all gross inside." "Maybe we're both gross inside." I didn't make that up. Nor am I making this up: "Waddaya mean?" "Waddaya MEAN, what do I mean?" The film is too long by, say, half an hour. And some of the actors must have been given free rein in their improvisations because the scenes become unbelievably raw, ridiculously excessive, shouting and screaming, smashing furniture in a fit of pique.
I hope Russell makes more movies because a successful film, not commercially but emotionally, is just a matter of successive approximation.