Awful

Rating: 4/10 (31 December 2013)

This movie was terrible. It was too long, confusing, boring, poorly directed and poorly written. The pace was all over the place. It was a poor man's Scorsese. Christian Bale did a Robert Deniro ripoff. The actors should have been reigned in by the director, but were given too much freedom. I'm surprised that the film has made so much money, but that doesn't mean it's a good film. It's a film that COULD have been great, but it failed in almost every way.
David O. Russell was trying to be Martin Scorsese: (1) Christian Bale was doing a Deniro imitation (2) Same narration style as many of Scorsese's films (3) Mob/Casino theme (4) Out of control wife and mistress (5) Similar music supervision style (such a Scorsese ripoff, it's embarrassing)
The cinematography was unfocused! Sometime the camera would pan slightly for no reason. Most of the actors' East Coast accents were borderline cartoonish. I suspect (and hope) that a lot of the dialog was improvised because it was distracting, slowed down the film and didn't help propel the storyline. Where were the producers? They should have demanded rewrites and a better edit. I can't believe this film was released this way. If this foreshadows the future quality of films, I'm going to stop watching films. In the hands of a different director, this could have been good.
This is a contender for the Oscars? It's all vapid hype! This film deserves no awards.
Deniro and Lous C.K's performances were very good, but not good enough to make me think the film was worth watching. I'd heard from others that the film was bad, but I didn't expect it to be TERRIBLE.