All in Hustle

Rating: 6/10 (20 February 2014)

American Hustle is the second movie since 1981 being nominated in the four acting categories of Oscar. The nominations are for Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Amy Adams, Jennifer Lawrence. This super start cast might pique interest in anyone even if they remotely belong to the world of movies. And no wonder, this stardom tricked me into it.
This supposedly comedy drama offers very little comedy and one might wonder why this movie is tagged to the word 'Comedy' in all the reviews. Those handful funny moments comes via Jennifer Lawrence as Rosalyn Rosenfeld, an unstable wife of Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale). She is the only saving grace of the movie. However, even her erratic character is exploited a bit when she kisses her rival Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams) in a rest room. That's awfully disgusting.
Now I wonder why Amy Adams has been nominated for awards? Because of receiving that weird kiss? What has she done in the movie except wearing waist low tops and kissing the co-stars, even a female co-star at that? She is supposed to be a seductive con artist who could pull any one to the ploy with her ingenuity. Is there any visual that explains this? She does tricks the wild FBI agent Richie Dimaso (Bradley Cooper), however she prefers more skin show with him rather than any sort of intelligence.
Richie is a wild, rather another erratic (just like Rosalyn) character in the movie, who was simply let loose in the screenplay. He says he is so ambitious about capturing the corrupted politicians. But he only says so, no action to prove that he is ambitious. He forms a deal with two most intelligent cons Irving and Sydney that they both would be freed in exchange to their help to trap at least four corrupts. But he even fails to check Sydney's background.
And finally Christian Bale, who is not the typical charismatic con, but rather a little plump, middle age man who is blessed with a heart of gold. He loves his son a lot. He refuses to give up on his wife. The problem is all these are shown via dialogues instead of any real reasons to believe him that he has a noble heart.
At the end, you don't care about any of these characters. All of them might have flared better if they stand alone. However, in a movie they all look lost, and so are we.