Of lovebirds, chargrin and knockouts

| Friday January 24, 2014 15:19

This is a movie that you will want to see twice. First, to take in all that is happening, savour it, enjoy con upon con, and the looks of the perpetuators and their victims. Second, to actually begin to make sense of what is really happening—who is conning who, how, when and with what consequences. It would also help to see it even a third time, because then you might have developed some comprehension of what people are saying. This isn’t easy, even for an American. This is a film that really merits sub-titles—they only appear when Arabic is being translated.

There are in American Hustle many patterns of speech: a cultured British accent, in this case spoken by Sydney Prosser when she poses as Lady Edith Greenleigh (acted magnificently by Amy Adams as a fiery bright red head), who as her real self has more of a southwest crispness; and a guttural-nasal Bronx accent that belongs to Irving Rosenfeld (played with suave and determination by the amazing Christian Bale, now distancing himself from his role as the masked-winged-Chiroptera-man crusader).

Mrs Rosalyn Rosenfeld’s Brooklynese (played by a perfectly gorgeous Jennifer Lawrence) grounds her seemingly scatterbrained role. A New Jersey growl of concern and affection belongs to the mayor of Camden, New Jersey, Carmine Polito (acted sincerely by Jeremy Renner) and is endearing. An FBI correct American lingo coloured by an Italian-American accent from Richard ‘Richie’ DiMaso (played by Bradley Cooper) as he runs helter-skelter to achieve his objectives; and even an east side Manhattan Italian mafia delivery from Mob King Victor Tellegio (Robert De Niro, in a largely unaccredited role) who now lives in Miami, Florida, and speaks fluent Arabic—imagine that.

Another reason you might want to see American Hustle more than once, is that it is vastly entertaining, dizzyingly exuberant and totally outlandish, with a very serious and sad streak running through it. It may seem like a great work of fiction, as there have been other masterpieces on conning, like Sting; but wrong—it has its origins in events that happened across the Hudson River from Manhattan. Irving Rosenfeld, in the opening scene, adjusts his thinning hair to appear to be what he is not. Is his whole life a con? He keeps his supposedly dumb-blonde wife Rosalyn curtailed at home with her son he has adopted. She pines for action while pretending she wants nothing to do with the world outside her four walls—wait until she gets the chance to move beyond them—devastating. Irving’s front is a number of dry cleaning stores. His office and its walls serve for his latest con, fine art, with copies sold as originals. When he meets Sydney, it is all 'she's got to be mine' behaviour to con her to him. He seduces her with Duke Ellington’s jazz and customer’s unclaimed clothes. But she is smarter than Irving, and knows what has to be done to keep the upper hand. Their partnership becomes known as London Associates. What’s British must be good.

Then just when Sydney, now Lady Edith, get things moving, the FBI arrives to arrest her for fraud. Agent Richie, though, falls for Lady Edith, and wants her to be part of his action a great sting. She finds she now has two boyfriends she must play off against each other how long can she keep it up? How can Irving tolerate her two timing him … he has to, because it is part of the new con they have been arm twisted to join.

Richie sees a way to use Lady Edith to entrap others bent on winning favours, through receiving bribes, including eventually the mayor and a number of New Jersey congressmen and a senator (the film is a take off on the famous FBI Abscam in 1978).

This is tied to well intentioned plans to redevelop Atlantic City through the building of a modern casino, to create a gambling Mecca or Las Vegas of the East, all for the welfare of the people of the Garden State shades of the great film Atlantic City (1980) that starred Burt Lancaster ( June 14, 2005). The FBI is conned into putting up seed money, and then when the bubble bursts, conned again into a final transfer of two million dollars into a numbered account. All of this is done with such bravado, backstabbing, forcefulness and quick-timing comic fantasy that it is hilarious.

All life is a never-ending scam. Recent events involving the closure of three lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee, New Jersey, may be traced beyond a governor and a mayor to two multi-billion dollar development projects in Fort Lee and possible corruption associated with them.

The director, David O. Russell, has given us recently a number of fine films including The Fighter that starred Christian Bale and Amy Adams (Mmegi, March 25, 2011) and Silver Linings Playbook (Mmegi, November 22, 2013) that starred Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence and earned her an Oscar last year as Best Actress.

American Hustle (2013) is two hours and 18 minutes long. It is rated 16+ for language and sex. The director is David O. Russell who also wrote the script with Earl Warren Singer. The cinematographer is Linus Sandgren. The editors are Jay Cassidy, Crispin Struthers and Alan Baumgarten. The music is by Danny Elfman and includes the 10538 Overture by the Electric Light Orchestra.

sasa_majuma@yahoo.co.uk