American Hustle Review

Rating: 6/10 (8 January 2014)

American Hustle is a very messy movie. It feels like the type of movie that a teenager and his friends would get together to make, to try and pay homage to the likes of Scorsese. The problem here is that American Hustle is a movie from David O'Russell, a director whose past movies I enjoyed a lot, with the likes of 'The Fighter', 'Silver Linings Playbook' and 'Three Kings'. David O'Russell shouldn't have to look to Scorsese for inspiration, because he comes up with good original ideas of his own. American Hustle feels a lot like a rip of Goodfellas. Things such as structure, narration, character arcs; all very reminiscent of Goodfellas. And in my opinion, Goodfellas is the greatest movie of all time, so if you're gonna pay homage to it, you're gonna have to do it right. David O'Russell doesn't do it right, producing a complete mess that, although not a bad film, could have been so much more.
The screenplay for American Hustle is garbage. It's really awful, and I sincerely hope that it doesn't receive a nomination at the Oscars because it's pretty bad. The story is very convoluted, has no satisfying conclusion and the characters are fairly messy and disbelievable. One thing the movie gets right is it's humour, but even so, a lot of that feels improvised and probably isn't even in the screenplay.
Acting is okay, but none of these actors are really performing to the best of their ability. Amy Adams and Bradley Cooper feel like the only ones who really lose themselves in their roles, and whilst Christian Bale is good he's hardly at the quality he was at in the likes of 'American Psycho'. Jennifer Lawrence delivers what's probably her worst performance to date, she has a great screen presence but only because she overacts so much that it's laughable. Louis C.K is really great, his scenes with Bradley Cooper were my favorites in the movie, and Jeremy Renner does a good job as well.
Things like costume design and and set design are great, but that's all aesthetic stuff. American Hustle has the style but not the substance, which is where it really fails. There's no other way around it; American Hustle is a huge disappointment. You could go and see this movie which, although is not bad, is basically a fake Scorsese movie, or you could go and see the real Scorsese with 'The Wolf Of Wall Street'. I think you know what the wiser option is.