American Hustle is all I need

Rating: 8/10 (3 January 2014)

American Hustle is one the big frontrunners this awards season having won a number of critics awards and been nominated for seven Golden Globes.
In 1978 Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) and Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams) are con-artists running a banking fraud scheme when they are arrested by FBI agent Ritchie DiMasco (Bradley Cooper) who issues an ultimatum, either be arrested or help him get four arrests to clear their records. Soon the trio are working together with a scheme to prove political corruption through a senior New Jersey politician, Cermine Polito (Jeremy Renner) who wants redevelop Atlantic City. But the operation is complicated by a mutual dislike between Irving and Ritchie, Irving's developing friendship with Cermine, Irving's wrecking ball of a wife, Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence) and a love triangle between the trio.
American Hustle is a excellently acted film as you would except from the cast of this talent. Bale goes through another physical transformation, giving himself a massive beer belly and Lawrence went to full gusto as a dizty, yet very manipulative woman who has Irving wrapped around her little finger. Adams also gave a surprisingly strong English accent for her character's false identity.
David O. Russell is a director who has had great recent track record and actors want to work with him. Russell does inject energy and wit throughout the film. There is a Scorsese style to the film as we see multiple story lines, the use of multiple voiceovers and different viewpoints and even the brief flashbacks. Russell was able to bring us back to the 70s with the period details and he does want to replicate the look of a Scorsese film. American Hustle also has a great soundtrack.
Throughout the film the questions of who is really in control of the situation and the constant manipulation and power plans between the characters as Ritchie and Irving trying to gain control of the situation and show they are the one who knows how to handle the operation whilst the women in between the men also look for their own self-determination and in Sydney's case her own survival.
Renner does play a small supporting role in the film but gets to play an interesting character, a politician who wants to do the best for constituents and his state, sees redevelopment of Atlantic City as a way to give people jobs. But he comes up to a system where he cannot get support from the Federal government so has to turn to act illegally to do what he thinks it is best. It would have been interesting to have seen the film from his point of view, exploring political morality and reality. This investigation also raises the question about whether the operation was entrapment, making someone an easy target so they can get an arrest and result instead of someone who is actually bad.
American Hustle is a very well made and acted film that does provide a crime film fix. But it is a good film, not a masterpiece that some critics are claiming it to be.