Hustled

Rating: 4/10 (3 January 2014)

There is a lot to be learned from watching American Hustle:
1. An unusual premise is a start, but without well developed characters and a fathomable plot, you are studying a map to nowhere. 2. popular and talented actresses can only do so much in unsympathetic roles, no matter how hard they try and how much skin they show. (Jennifer Lawrence gets to add some color, but can't change the basically tedious arc of the story line and action deadening dialogue) 3.. Good directors occasionally misfire, even one with the talent for Silver Linings Playbook. 4. At some point, at some level, we want to be One of Them, the characters we see on the screen...to live outside of our lives for two plus hours and get some kind of transformation or change as a result. But with American Hustle, . I didn't want to be someone routinely taking other people's money in fraudulent loan schemes, or selling fake art ( the Christian Bale and Amy Adams characters), nor did I want to put a notch on my FBI agent gun by taking down a well meaning politician for attempting an unorthodox way of raising money to rebuild a slumping Atlantic City (the Bradley Cooper character ). No one was likable or relatable, although I woke up for a tense five minutes in which Robert DeNiro morphed into a senior mob apparatchik who throws the schemers for a loop by speaking Arabic to a faux sheik set up by the FBI. Still, this little delight not worth the time wasted. I don't want to be one of them and I don't particularly want to watch them, either. Save your $$, if you want to stay impervious to scams including those perpetrated by the Hollywood publicity machines.