American Hustle

American Hustle

With the 70s crime comedy American Hustle, David O. Russell surpasses Martin Scorsese at his own game in all the right ways. In fact, this is a more exhilarating and satisfying film for me than Scorsese’s latest movie (The Wolf of Wall Street), which was also based on a true story about an unstoppable financial con artist. Unreliable narration and urgent zooms; ’70s milieu of flashy dressing scammers and mobsters; pop songs carefully chosen to underscore key emotional moments those unmistakable Scorcesean touches are here, but Russell has given them a different kind of spin.

This director has always been attracted to characters teetering on the brink of implosion or explosion, and with “American Hustle” he’s enlisted his own posse of actors from his last two films as his de facto repertory company: Christian Bale and Amy Adams from 2011’s “The Fighter”; Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence from “Silver Linings Playbook.” But he is so masterly with these performers (despite reports of how he runs them ragged with motivation), that not only does he find another side to them than what we saw in prior movies together he finds another side to them than we ever saw anywhere before.

Co-written by Eric Singer, Russell’s new picture is inspired by the Abscam sting operation in late-’70s/early-’80s America, when an FBI agent teamed up with a con artist to catch lawmakers accepting bribes. “Some of this actually happened,” cheekily informs a title card during one of the early scenes. This is after we’ve seen Bale’s paunchy Irving Rosenfeld fixing a hideous hairpiece onto his gleaming dome.

There isn’t much that a good comb-over can’t hide, but Irving doesn’t even bother trying; it draws attention away from his belly. This swaggering owner of a small chain of dry cleaners on Long Island does most of his business with fake art and fraudulent personal loans he’s got all the swagger of a man who knows he’s cheating everybody else, but he himself is being cheated by life.

He meets his match at a pool party in Adams’ Sydney Prosser, a scrappy young woman from Albuquerque who wants to remake herself in high style. She suggests adopting an English accent and the persona of posh Lady Edith who has connections to the banking elite and thus kicks Irving’s cons into overdrive. (All the choices from costume designer Michael Wilkinson are perfectly tacky in their period allure; Adams’ ensembles are particularly delicious: a plunging, sparkling parade of sexy little numbers that allow the actress to assert her untapped va-va-voominess.)

Irving and Sydney become partners in crime and love but wait. He has a wife, and son: Lawrence’s Rosalyn, needy and vulnerable but also spectacularly passive-aggressive. With her spray tan, towering hairdo and talon-like nails, Rosalyn is a force of nature or nurture it is difficult to say. She knows enough to be dangerous, which might make her as much if not more so than any G-man closing in on them. Her complexity alone makes her interesting to watch she’s just crazy enough to think she’s sane and Lawrence is radiant scene-stealer. There seems nothing this performer cannot do across genres

Cooper’s Richie DiMaso is a hot-headed (and tight-curler-wearing) FBI agent who wants to make a name for himself with a big bust. (Seriously, the hair is terrible worse even than Bale’s; Russell goes so far as to show Cooper sitting at the kitchen table with those itty-bitty curlers in. It’s kind of precious.) He exposes their scheme and forces them to help him net even bigger fish to get themselves out of trouble. But he also finds himself falling for sexy Sydney, Lady Edith and she may feel the same way. Or does she? Part of the fun of “American Hustle” is that it keeps us constantly wondering who’s scamming whom.

Russell doesn’t judge any of these people for their stupidity or their dreams. He loves them for their quirks and flaws. The fact that Rosalyn is always on the verge of burning down the house, for example, becomes endearing in Russell’s hands. (Microwave ovens aren’t for everyone.) We even end up feeling sorry for Jeremy Renner as crooked Camden, N.J., Mayor Carmine Polito.

He’s a criminal too: He’s on the take and coaxes more powerful politicians to join him in the name of reviving Atlantic City. Yet Renner makes us feel this warm-hearted family man’s benevolence, and the bromance that forms between him and Bale’s character is sweet.

Russell’s film is big and sprawling and messy, but that seems fitting given these larger than life characters, their bottomless greed and their brazen schemes. Yes, it looks as if this cast went berserk at a Goodwill store and treated themselves to the grooviest duds they could find for an elaborate game of dress-up, but the clothes are more than just kitschy punchlines: They’re an expression of their wearers’ ambition, a reflection of their characters’ gaudy idea of the American dream.

The movie is probably a bit too long, too, but it’s so much fun to hang out with these people, and Russell creates such an irresistibly nutso vibe around them that if you do notice the running time, you probably won’t mind. For all its bravado and big personality, “American Hustle” is ultimately a character study an exploration of dissatisfaction and drive, and the lengths we’re willing to go for that elusive thing called a better life.

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