Film Review: AMERICAN HUSTLE

This strange and funny story rolls along at a comfortable pace, with quirky characters and great performances, I loved it ...Naomi

American Hustle. Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Renner, Christian Bale, Jennifer Lawrence

WHAT'S IT ABOUT?

A fictional film set in the alluring world of one of the most extraordinary scandals of the 1970s, American Hustle tells the story of brilliant con man Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale), who along with his equally cunning and seductive partner Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams) is forced to work for a wild FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper). DiMaso pushes them into a world of Jersey powerbrokers and mafia that’s as dangerous as it is enchanting. Jeremy Renner is Carmine Polito, the passionate, volatile, New Jersey political operator caught between the con-artists and Feds. Irving's unpredictable wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence) could be the one to pull the thread that brings the entire world crashing down. Like David O. Russell's two previous films, American Hustle defies genre to tell a story of love, reinvention, and survival.

American Hustle. Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams

COMMENTS FROM THE DIRECTOR

American Hustle marks the third part in a three-film evolution for filmmaker David Russell. Beginning with The Fighter, continuing with Silver Linings Playbook, and playing out on a larger canvas than ever before in American Hustle, Russell centers on characters who are trying to change their lives through a process of reinvention. "These are movies about people whose lives have not gone the way they wanted or intended," he explains. "There remains something deeply lovable about them, but they're also heartbreaking. They spend the entire film, not just the third act, reckoning with who they are and how they are going to find their way to love life again. These characters have their sense of who they are splintered into pieces, and are wondering not just what they're going to do, but how they're going to care about life again, how they're going to love again. And it is important to me that they are passionate people who do or have truly loved life in some specific ways. This is as important to me as the ordeal of how they persevere, come out the other side, humbled and their love intact or renewed. It is no cliché when it is, as Irving says, lived from the feet up."

WHO MADE IT?

An Atlas Entertainment production presented by Columbia Pictures and Annapurna Pictures

Starring Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, and Jennifer Lawrence

Directed by David O. Russell

Written by Eric Warren Singer and David O. Russell

Produced by Charles Roven, Richard Suckle, Megan Ellison, and Jonathan Gordon

Executive Producers: Matthew Budman, Bradley Cooper, Eric Warren Singer, and George Parra

Director of Photography is Linus Sandgren F.S.F.

Production Designer is Judy Becker

Edited by Jay Cassidy A.C.E., Crispin Struthers and Alan Baumgarten A.C.E.

Costume designer is Michael Wilkinson

Music by Danny Elfman. Music Supervisor is Susan Jacobs