American Hustle (2013) Still a wonderful con all these years later
“We’re all conning ourselves. Just to get through life”
American Hustle truly begins as magnificently as it continues throughout its 138 minute running time of constant deception and a con within a con with “Jeep’s Blues” by Duke Ellington accompanying not one but two old school Columbia Pictures logos and an immediate statement of “Some of this actually happened” in a simple white font on a dark black background. Against a backdrop of faint sounds from an ongoing radio broadcast, the film is immediately rooted in the late 1970’s and “April 28, 1978 — Plaza Hotel, New York” and we cut to a chubby and partly dressed “Irving Rosenfeld” (Christian Bale) gluing what natural strands of hair he has left on his otherwise bald head to other clumps of hair in the most elaborate and obvious comb over you ever did see! Next seen fully and now fully dressed and resplendent in a sumptuous looking velvet smoking jacket with his hairpiece held in place by both glue and a voluminous amount of hairspray, we see Irving largely via a reflection in a large gold framed mirror as the second of the film’s brilliant selection of songs begins with “A Horse With No Name” by America as he enters an adjoining room containing a number of FBI agents watching events from another nearby room on a selection of small monitors. Returning to the main suite, the door immediately opens with “Sydney Prosser” (Amy Adams) immediately fixing Irving with a silent stare until the silence filled tension is broken by FBI agent “Richie DiMaso” (Bradley Cooper) bursting through the door in a torrent of accusatory questions for Irving and “What are you doing going behind my back, telling people I’m screwing up my own operation?”.
A bitter argument ensues between two alpha males desperate for dominance on either side of the razor thin line between legality and the art of the con they’re jointly trying to mastermind, and for the affections of the lady playing peacemaker between them. Irving complains about everything: the set up of their sting operation, the hotel, the suite, even the food before, with his ire rising, he’s dumbfounded to see that Richie is even dressed, or been dressed by Sydney, in a mirror image to himself as he asks bitterly “You went in my closet or something?”. Staring now at a wordless Sydney, their loud verbal joust continues until Richie twists the knife of fights of the past as he blurts out he’s “never laid a hand” on Sydney (which she corrects him as “technically that’s not true”) before Richie continues to antagonise Irving by claiming that whilst they have been close, they haven’t had sex. With Irving clearly rattled, Richie goes in for the kill as he states that if he really wanted to bother him he’d touch his face (which he does!) causing Irving to exclaim angrily “Don’t you fucking touch me. THAT bothers me” before he quickly follows this by messing with Irving’s carefully constructed hairpiece, sending pieces of hair everywhere! As Sydney helps Irving with his hair, Richie remains nervously anxious for the three of them to make their way into a room nearby containing the mayor and essentially the “mark” of their sting operation and following a close-up on Irving and Sydney wordlessly staring at each other and Richie opening and closing a briefcase full of cash, a close-up on Richie ends this tension filled scene with a simple if stern, “let’s go”.
We cut to the film’s opening credits in a burned yellow coloured font as all three characters are captured walking the corridors of the hotel in slow motion accompanied by the third of many beautiful songs contained within the film and “Dirty Work” by Steely Dan. As Sydney pushes through a door separating hotel corridors, “AMERICAN HUSTLE” is displayed beneath all three characters as we quickly cut from a smiling Sydney to “Mayor Carmine Polito” (Jeremy Renner) and “Carl Elway” (Shea Whigham) both smoking and in slow motion, awaiting their arrival. Still in slow motion we see smile filled introductions from everyone except a clearly agitated Irving as he rather slumps stone faced on a sofa as Richie places the briefcase on the floor. We cut to black and white surveillance footage of the meeting as Richie clumsily tries to pass the briefcase to the mayor causing him to rise to his feet and back away. “It’ll be a sign of disrespect to the Sheik if the mayor didn’t take it” Richie exclaims, and “It’s for you mayor”, but clearly spooked, the mayor states candidly that he doesn’t know anyone here in the meeting and “All I know is that I came to meet a Sheik” and as he’s clearly not here, he exits the room.
With only Irving, Sydney and Richie now remaining in the room an argument erupts between the two alpha males once more. Irving, furious at Richie’s clumsy attempt to bribe the mayor clearly didn’t want this meeting in the first place, fearing it would only end in calamity and with Richie’s operation in danger of collapsing he bitterly states “I’m gonna go fucking mop up your mess” as he exits the room in pursuit of the mayor. A camera zoom on Sydney’s face tells the obvious story and the ramifications should Irving not catch up with the mayor and news of their attempted bribe become common knowledge. Bitterly angry and waiting for the lift to arrive and his pursuit of the mayor to begin, the first of a continuing narration from Irving commences:
“Did you ever have to find a way to survive, and you knew your choices were bad? I learned how to survive when I was a kid”
We cut to a flashback of Irving as a pre-teenage child smashing several shop windows and thus providing much needed business for his father.
“My father had a glass business. I would rather be on the taking side than the getting taken side any day of the week, especially after I saw how my father got taken”
During the continuing narration we see Irving as a child watching his father being leaned on and pressured by what we can only assume as local neighbourhood gangsters.
“I mean, seeing that scarred me for life. I took it upon myself to drum up business. I became a different kind of guy than my father. I became a con-artist for real. From the feet up. I was gonna survive no matter what”
A further flashback now but a near present day Irving picking up broken glass from the pavement beneath a smashed window behind him.
“I still had the glass business and a few dry cleaning stores also, and I did some art dealing on the side. Stolen, or forged art”
Near present day once more, and a flashback to a pool party.
“So, one January, I go to my friend’s pool party in Long Island…”
We cut to a smiling Irving enjoying himself as his eyes wander around the room before settling on Sydney who, after catching Irving staring at her intently and with a welcoming smile, responds in kind with a lingering look of smiling appreciation. Quickly we find them in conversation as Irving notices Sydney’s bracelet containing small images of the jazz magician Duke Ellington as she confirms “He saved my life many times”. Irving responds that he knows the feeling and is clearly struck dumb that he’s talking to a genuine fan of an artist he admires greatly and after they both agree that the album that saved their life was “Jeep’s Blues”, Irving eagerly asks the young lady he can’t drag his eyes away from “You wanna hear it?”. As Irving departs the screen it’s Sydney’s turn to be dumbfounded with the man she’s only just met talking about Duke Ellington and we quickly cut to the record playing on a turntable as Sydney reads the back sleeve of the album cover and Irving animatedly gesturing at the majesty of the beginning of the album they both agree is pure “magic”. After infatuated and longing glances at each other, Sydney’s narration begins:
“He wasn’t necessarily in good shape, and he had this combover that was rather elaborate. He had this air about him and he had this confidence that drew me to him. He was who he was. He didn’t care”
And now a return to Irving’s narration:
“I mean, she was a very particular person. Like me, she had come from a place where her options were limited”
We cut to a youthful Sydney, an an exotic dancer in a nightclub:
“It actually can feel kind of sexy sometimes. There’s a boldness in it. But where would that boldness take me? I didn’t know. But I was gonna find out”
We return to a youthful Sydney once more and now during the daytime thumbing through a rack of vinyl records before a job interview, and a return once more to Irving’s narration:
“Like me, she learned to survive and reinvent herself. She knew she had to reinvent herself and her identity. And like me, she envisioned a better, elegant future for herself. Like me, she knew you had to have a vision. She came to New York and she envisioned it, and just like that she applied for a job at Cosmopolitan magazine. She was unlike anybody I ever knew. She was smart. She saw through people in situations, and she knew how to live with passion and style. She understood Duke Ellington”
A final return to Sydney’s narration:
“I was broke, fearless, with nothing to lose, and my dream, more than anything, was to become anyone else other than who I was”
We cut to Sydney and Irving slowly dancing, cuddling and kissing gently to the music of Duke Ellington…
So there you have the opening 13 minutes of American Hustle written by both director David O Russell and Eric Singer and inspired by the Abscam bribery scandal of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s involving the FBI and several members of the United States Congress. Lies and deceit are as obvious through lines as are the con artists trying to keep a tangled and insane story from unravelling before their eyes amid the obvious question of who is ultimately conning who in a film that garnered a gargantuan ten Oscar nominations at the 86th Academy Awards in 2014 but remarkably failed to land a single golden statuette. Behind the camera, director David O Russell was nominated in the Best Director and Best Original Screenplay categories as his producing partners were nominated for Best Picture and the film was also nominated for Best Costume Design, Best Editing and Best Production Design. In front of the camera, all four marquee names of Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence (as Irving’s wife “Rosalyn Rosenfeld”) were nominated in the Best Actor/Actress or Supporting Actor/Actress categories and yet Bale’s phenomenal performance failed to snare the Oscar from the grasp of Matthew McConaughey in Dallas Buyers Club, Amy Adams lost out to Cate Blanchett in Blue Jasmine, Bradley Cooper’s fast talking and reckless desperation to climb within the ranks of the FBI wasn’t good enough to see off Jared Leto’s unreal performance in Dallas Buyers Club and even Jennifer Lawrence dancing and snarling her way brilliantly through a rendition of “Live and Let Die” by Wings was trumped by Lupita Nyong’o in Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave.
Writing in retrospect, I remain surprised that Oscars weren’t forthcoming for David O Russell’s (unlucky) seventh film of a now ten, but perhaps that’s the fan in me speaking as ever as despite loving Three Kings, The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook and particularly 2022’s Amsterdam, I adore this movie for the performances noted above, Louis CK trying to control his errant FBI field agent (and of course his ice fishing story!) and then, as I hope I’ve conveyed briefly above, you have a music soundtrack to live and let die for. From a madly in love Irving and Sydney dancing to “I’ve Got Your Number” by Jack Jones, to Sydney and Richie disco dancing to “I Feel Love” by Donna Summer, Irving and Mayor Polito drunkenly singing “Delilah” by Tom Jones, to “Live and Let Die” (Wings), “Jean Genie” (David Bowie) and then, the coup de grâce of everyone arriving for the night out of their duplicitous lives soundtracked by “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” by Elton John (and Sydney and Richie arriving through a hail of fireworks and daggers of hatred from Irving and Rosalyn!) and a remarkable scene ending with “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” by the Bee Gees as everyone’s lives have been changed, and changed forever.
American Hustle remains a true gem of a film.
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.
Whilst you’re here I may as well brag about the release of my trilogy of recently self-published books. Beautiful covers eh! As the title(s) would suggest, this is my life at the movies or at least from 1980 to 2024, and in volume 1 you’ll find 80 spoiler free appraisals of movies from debut filmmakers, 91 of the very best films appraised with love and absent of spoilers from 1990–2024 in volume 2, and in volume 3 you’ll find career “specials” on Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino together with the very best of the rest and another 87 spoiler free film reviews from 2001–2024.
All available in hardback and paperback and here are some handy links:
"A Life at the Movies Vol.1" - link to Amazon
"A Life at the Movies Vol.2" - link to Amazon
"A Life at the Movies Vol.3" - link to Amazon
One of the few fairly recent films
that rank with the best of the 70s
American Hustle!
And I've had the blu ray
For years