Average

Rating: 5/10 (6 July 2014)

Very, very average movie. And considering the cast, it's actually bad. I don't know why there is a comedy tag on the movie. There were about 2 comic occasions in a 138 minutes long movie. There is also a clear stance on showing the FBI as the 'bad guys' while trying to make Carmine Polito as Maria Teresa. Another irritating thing was the notion that the whole FBI operation was conducted by a single guy. And not a very bright one.
I liked the plot. Though it took about an hour to ignite the engines, it progressed interestingly afterwords. Even the unnecessary relationship matters, that delayed the progress as the movie went on, didn't damage the plot extensively.
Other bright spots are the performances of Christian Bale, Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner. Jennifer Lawrence did a great job, but her character got much more screen time that it should.
Bradley Cooper, on the other hand, ruined what others built. Every scene he was in, brought some antagonism from my side. Instead of having a serious, smart and restrained type of agent we got a stupid and a cocky one. This wasn't the right type of character, and Bradley Cooper wasn't the right actor.
In all, FBI looked like a bunch of clowns. Bypassing the chain of command, beating your supervisor.
There is another drawback in focusing on the unnecessary meandering relationship between the main characters. However, on the most part, the actors played their roles well and it wasn't the accent.
In conclusion I would say that the director, David O. Russel, has some gift of storytelling but fails to make it entertaining. And the latter happens mainly because of the implicit stupidity in the movie. For myself, I have a very low tolerance for implicit stupidity. As I see it, the director assumes the audience is not smart enough, and that is a major fault. For some movies it is alright to be stupid. American Hustle on the other hand, is plot and character driven drama, so it does not have any excuse of being such.