I’m not a fan of writer/director David O. Russell. Now, I never saw his first big movie, Three Kings. I thought The Fighter (Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale) and Flirting with Disaster (Ben Stiller) were okay. Silver Linings Playbook was awful, and I don’t know why it got nominated for so many awards. American Hustle was okay, but highly overrated. Joy (Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro) wasn’t very good. This is the first movie he’s done since that film seven years ago. Now, he’s got some of the same actors he’s used before, and an incredible cast, and they’re wasted in this film. It’s not nearly as funny or hip as Russell thought it would be. I might even give Chris Rock a Will Smith style slap just for being in it.
This picture doesn’t know the story it wants to tell, or what kind of movie it is. It has thinly drawn characters, and too many of them. And watching a movie that takes place in 1933, with interesting set pieces and costume design, you wonder just how frustrating it is that the studio probably spent $100 million making this. So far, critics have disliked it; and at the screening I attended, the audience appeared to hate it. Leaving, I overheard people saying: “Well, that sucked”, “Did you fall asleep too?”, and “I did, and when I woke up I looked at you, and you were sleeping.”
Sleeping would be a better way to spend your two hours.
At times, Russell tried going for an Adam McKay (The Big Short, Vice, Don’t Look Up) satire with a big dose of Coen brothers wackiness.
The cast includes two of my favorite actors – Matthias Schoenaerts and Michael Shannon. One of my wife’s favorite actors – Christian Bale. He was so fun to watch in this, with a voice that reminded me at times of Dustin Hofman, other times Al Pacino, and a few times John Savage. John David Washington reminded me of his dad Denzel, when a scene shows him running a troop of soldiers in WWI (Glory) and when he is introduced as an “esquire” (Roman Israel, Esq.). It also starred another one of my wife’s favorites – Rami Malek. The comedic actors Chris Rock (who always makes you laugh just by anything that comes out of his mouth, especially saying that when there’s a dead white man in a box, it’s going to be the two Black guys blamed) and Mike Myers. He’s a distraction. In movies, he always seems like he’s doing an SNL skit with his wigs and accents. My wife said, “When he started talking about cabals, I thought he was doing his Pentaverate thing.”
Robert De Niro plays it straight and it feels like he’s in a completely different movie. Taylor Swift does a decent job (and yes, she does sing; sort of). And as gorgeous as Margot Robbie always is, for my money, Zoe Saldana is just as beautiful.
With such a strong cast, it’s a shame this thing is overly plotted and meandering.
It’s based on some true events. There are three friends – Dr. Burt Berendsen (Bale), who does a lot of the same drugs he gives to patients. Nurse Valerie Voze (Robbie), who takes shrapnel out of WWI patients and uses them for wacky art projects; and attorney Harold Woodman (Washington), who Berendsen met when he was his officer in the war and they made a pact to watch each other’s backs. They are falsely accused of murder and are on the run from the police and the gangsters that want to frame/kill them. The third act gets a bit preachy with the social commentary, trying to make it feel like some of the same things are happening today. Overall though, the murder mystery, the bizarre friendship that’s shown developing when the three characters are in Amsterdam, the politics…it’s all just too much thrown at ya.
This is a movie I can safely say, I don’t see anybody really enjoying. The entire drive home, my wife kept telling me how much she hated it (but a few times, saying how great Bale was in it).
If you enjoy going to a movie and noticing all the famous faces that pop up in a few scenes, you might like it. Everyone else should probably skip it.
1 ½ stars out of 5.