Master Hustler
by Jack Simons
A movie comes along from time to time that astounds us with excellence in its individual parts, but when all the parts add together . . . not quite as much. American Hustle is a movie like that.
As many times as I watch it, I discover only polished brilliance in the parts, but somehow the whole doesn’t fulfill the promise of the parts. I suppose it’s because the subject matter concerns the big con, the small con, big lies and small, ambition and greed, with winners and losers determined by who walks away from the game with the most chips.
It is the muck that takes away from the excellence of the film.
I might on occasion want to see Oedipus take out his own eyes, or watch Othello smother Desdemona in her bed, but those events took place in universes ruled by o’er-watching gods, or God. American Hustle takes place in an empty, mechanical universe – the highest religious attainment of the modern world. Empty is empty no matter what passion is poured into it – so that is how the film leaves me.
Louis C. K. as Stoddard Thorsen, an FBI middle manager, is one of the two bright lights of the whole movie, and he shines outstandingly, though in the role of a fifty-watt bulb. His character must, without thanks or help, rein in the manically ambitious agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper). Each scene Louis C. K. plays with Cooper is to die for.
But then each scene in the movie is to die for – the scenes aren’t the problem.
The plot can’t be summarized with any efficiency, and I won’t try. I’ll just tell you that it involves the FBI ABSCAM (Arab scam) operation of the late 1970s; bringing gambling to Atlantic City, N.J.; mafia heavies; the moral virtue of the mayor of Camden, N.J.; the love a con man has for his mistress – his adopted son – the respect he has for a mark; the uncontrolled ambition of an FBI agent; the rivalry over, and love two women have for one man; the dangers of swimming in a bloody-water shark tank.
The plot – what plot? This movie is all about relationships and survival.
There are many great lines in the movie. Here are three:
The protagonist Irving Rosenfield (Christian Bale) voice over about his wife, Roselyn (Jennifer Lawrence): “She was the Picasso of passive-aggressive karate.”
Rosenfield to FBI agent DiMaso: “That’s the way the world works. Not black and white like you say. Extremely gray.”
Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams) to Irving: “Everybody at the bottom crosses paths eventually in a pool of desperation, and you are waiting for them.”
American Hustle is all about relationships. Write down on a legal pad the names of all the characters in the film – write their names in a circle. Then draw lines with arrows connecting the characters to other characters and describe the relationship on the line. Where the lines intersect, at the center, write the name of Christian Bale’s character, Irving Rosenfield. It is as though the film was written from that schemata, with Bale’s character providing the social glue that binds them all together.
Jeremy Renner as Mayor Carmine Polito of Camden, N.J., plays a flatter role than others, but along with Louis C.K. shines a light against the dark muck portrayed by the other characters.
Eric Warren Singer wrote the original screenplay. No one would produce it. David O. Russell picked up the screenplay and rewrote it, whether he and Singer rewrote it together, or whether Russell did the rewrite on his own, I don’t know. Singer wrote The International, but no one wanted to do his ABSCAM screenplay until Russell found it. How the screenplay lost out in the Oscars is for students of the Academy to determine. Crazier choices have been made in the past, and will be in the future.
If the word rational is involved in the discussion, then American Hustle going 0 for 10 at the Academy Awards is one of those wrongs that make no sense. Having observed the Academy for many decades, I am certain that the word too often has no meaning.
What I write from here to the end can only be described as Cheer-leading:
Russell is the finest director working in cinema today. If he is a louse, I don’t care. He might also be the finest writer, though I don’t want to take away from Singer’s involvement.
Bale’s contribution to the film cannot be reckoned. His performance provides the relational link to every other character. His finest scene is at the heart of the film when he and the other principals are sitting in an alley at a round table covered by a table cloth with Victor Tellegio (played uncredited by Robert De Niro) — the ultimate Don, Boss, Mafia Enforcer — discussing the $10,000,000 that Bale’s party is going to provide the Mafia as proof of good faith. Bale reminded me of Wiley E. Coyote just after he has run off the edge of the cliff and realizes that nothing but thin air exists between him and abyss.
The other actors: Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Jeremy Renner, even Louis C. K. will not live long enough to find a role that equals their role and acting in American Hustle. If I am wrong, it will please me endlessly, and I pray that I am wrong.
De Niro – that wasted American resource – I did not recognize him when he appeared in the movie. I went home and searched Google to see if I could identify the actor that played Tellegio. “Where did they find an unknown who could bring so much strength, so much presence to such a short scene?” I thought. What it proves is that someone should create a vehicle that employs a great talent now lying discarded because of age and previous use.
If you can, watch the movie.
The vocabulary is explicit.
The theme is degraded.
Watch it anyway, in many modes it is real.
I like the film much more than my wife does, but she is put off by Amy Adams’s wardrobe choices.
I, actually, didn’t notice.
