3.5 horrifically-paced-character-driven-instant-classics out of 4
Pacing is a cinematic term that can be summed up as knowing when to turn off the camera and stop shooting. It’s more than just the knowledge that some stories don’t need three hours of run-time to be told properly, because pacing isn’t just about run-time. Pacing is knowing how to sequence plot points, how to direct actors so they don’t drain the audience’s patience, and how to edit scenes so they maintain the audience’s attention without sacrificing either plot or characterization. Sadly, American Hustle is not a well-paced movie. At least, not in the conventional sense of the term.
A fun and engaging two hour crime-comedy-drama romp that’s an intriguing character study on human survival, David O. Russell’s latest directorial effort suffers from pacing so audacious that I was more inclined to watch molasses trickle down a wall. It’s a fantastic movie by all accounts – great characters, interesting plot, strong writing, and some of the best acting to ever come out of these actors – but it is painfully, deliberately, ridiculously slow.
Luckily, the combined acting talents of Bradley Cooper, Amy Adams, Christian Bale, Jeremy Renner, and Jennifer Lawrence are enough to turn the would-be disaster into something spectacular.
The audience is constantly hustled this way throughout the entire film, and that is completely intentional on the part of the filmmakers.
Throughout much of its fairly standard run-time, American Hustle constantly shows far less interest in its plot than it does in its characters. Make no mistake, however – there is a coherent story, and the intimate connection it forges with its characters is what makes the movie so compelling.
Taking the FBI ABSCAM operations of the 1970s and 1980s and putting them centre stage, the plot’s main conceit features con-man Irving Rosenfield (Christian Bale), forced to work with ambitious FBI agent Richard DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) to expose corrupt politicians taking bribes from a fake Arab Sheik. The absurd premise warrants an opening title card explaining that “some of this actually happened.”
Caught between Rosenfield and DiMaso are Amy Adams’s Sydney Prosser and Jennifer Lawrence’s Rosalyn Rosenfield. Both characters are romantically tied to the charismatic Irving, with Sydney as his lover and Rosalyn as his deranged and incredibly unstable wife.
As Prosser, Adams channels her inner scavenger, playing a character whose sole purpose is to fight for the survival of herself and the man she loves. Prosser hustles foolish men by playing the role of an English lady, luring them into a feeling of safety before bringing them to Irving to be robbed. The connection between Irving and Sydney is the film’s driving relationship, and the audience feels the love the two share for each other. They want a good life together, away from the need to steal, but money is the only thing they lack.
Serving as the film’s secondary female character, Rosalyn traps Irving in her web of insanity. He is powerless against her, and she is one of the few forces in his universe that he cannot control. There’s a way that Lawrence plays Rosalyn that makes the audience shiver. She’s silly, childish, needy, and immature, but we can tell that Irving’s being hustled, just as we are. Rosalyn manipulates Irving like he manipulates the people who come to him with Sydney.
It’s how these people survive.
Irving’s weakness is that he believes in family. One wouldn’t expect a con man to want anything that ties him down, but Irving makes it clear that his relationship to his work only exists for the important people in his life. In this case, those people are Sydney and his step-son. The boy is Irving’s through his marriage to Rosalyn – one more way that the unstable wife seduces her husband.
Once Irving meets DiMaso, the con-man-with-a-heart-of-gold finds friendship in Jeremy Renners’ Carmine Polito, the mayor of New Jersey who only wishes to help the people of his city.
Praise must be given to Renner. Polito isn’t sleazy, and the audience will wait the entire film to be hustled. Amazingly, we never are. To the last moment, Polito is every bit the man that the audience sees him to be. Ultimately, Polito is every bit the man that Irving wishes he could be himself.
There should be no mistake: these characters are more important than the story they find themselves in, and each cast member plays their part with a flourish. As the audience, we fall for their slick charm, and whether they’re sleazy, slimeball, seductive, or sincere, we’re caught up in their acts.
Ultimately, the film is very slow, but not at all boring. There is simply no universe where American Hustle is a bad movie, but in each of those universes, it is a slow movie.