American Hustle Movie Review, Stars Christian Bale, Amy Adams Movies for Grownups
' American Hustle' Does the ' 70s in Style
Rating: R Running Time: 2 hours, 18 minutes Stars: Amy Adams, Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Jeremy Renner Director: David O. Russell Why do movies like American Hustle — which purports to re-create the go-go world of — make me feel like I was sleepwalking through the period in question? Annapurna Productions Amy Adams and Christian Bale revisit 1970s America in "American Hustle." Did really throb with this kind of anything-goes, wheeler-dealer vibe? Did guys actually wear tight perms like 's skull-hugging 'do? Did the women in fact bare as much of themselves on the street as does in this film? And was all of the music as electrifying as 's "" and 's ""? (Or ' "," a late '60s tune that gets prominent play here as well?) AARP Members! . Director/cowriter , I suspect, has taken more-or-less random artifacts of 1970s America, simmered them down and presented them in a highly condensed serving. That said, it's an irresistible compote. Get Social With Bill
Check out and then on this year's best films Tweet This! Follow us American Hustle begins with the cheeky title card: "Some of this actually happened." The "some" part is the infamous Abscam scandal, an FBI sting that caught several politicians selling influence to an Arab "sheik" who turned out to be a Fed. Cooper plays the FBI agent who masterminded the scheme; Adams and play two New Jersey con artists he coerces into helping him pull it off. After that, it seems, fiction quickly overtakes history. No matter: The three stars play off one another perfectly, and the fun comes as their characters try to gain the upper hand by launching scams within scams against each other. Further complicating it all are the con man's mercurial wife (, deftly shooting insults instead of arrows) and the mayor of Camden, N.J. (, his hair channeling 's in ), a basically decent man ensnared by the scam. If American Hustle has anything real to say, it's some minor bromide about greed and corruption. Or might it be a meditation on the nature of loyalty? Ultimately, like its central characters, American Hustle is all about 'tude; of that, it's got a ton. Bill Newcott writes about Movies for Grownups and other entertainment stories for AARP Media. Also of Interest br
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