{"id":13759,"date":"2017-03-15T09:00:09","date_gmt":"2017-03-15T16:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=13759"},"modified":"2017-03-13T15:34:15","modified_gmt":"2017-03-13T22:34:15","slug":"american-hustle-kind-of-works-despite-trying-so-hard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2017\/03\/15\/american-hustle-kind-of-works-despite-trying-so-hard\/","title":{"rendered":"To See or Not to See<\/em>: American Hustle<\/em> kind of works, despite trying so hard"},"content":{"rendered":"

American Hustle
\n<\/i>3\/5<\/p>\n

It\u2019s got it all\u2014the look, the themes, the grit, the style. It\u2019s got the million-dollar soundtrack and the multi-million-dollar stars\u2014beautiful stars, talented stars, stars willing to gain 40-plus pounds for their roles. It\u2019s got the energy a period crime drama should, and more talent behind it than seems possible. But American Hustle<\/i> (2013) isn\u2019t quite as wonderful as the sum of its parts.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Usually it\u2019s the imperfections of life that are most fulfilling\u2014the beater car you can leave unlocked versus the $50,000 Mercedes that has you wincing on gravel driveways. Or the $100 flip-phone versus the $1,000 iPhone that you wrap in $100 of plastic to keep it safe. Each side has its own advantages, but only one side comes baggage-free; can you really enjoy something you\u2019ve spent next month\u2019s rent on?<\/p>\n

American Hustle<\/i> was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, but it\u2019s loved mistakenly. It\u2019s loved for all the reasons above and because, well, how could it not be good? <\/i>Which really isn\u2019t much of a reason at all.<\/p>\n

You can see the film trying so hard to be clever and stylish; it charges through America\u2019s \u201cA Horse with No Name\u201d and Steely Dan\u2019s \u201cDirty Work\u201d within its first 10 minutes; the dialogue is funny and quirky and subverts the \u201cpowerful man\u201d trope; it brings in Louis CK, then ELO\u2019s \u201c10538 Overture,\u201d then quickly goes to Elton John\u2019s \u201cGoodbye Yellow Brick Road,\u201d and then semi-ironic cool slow-mo walking, Robert De Niro playing a caricature of a mobster\u2026<\/p>\n

However, I\u2019ll be damned if it doesn\u2019t work most of the time, despite its eagerness. You can criticize following up \u201cLive and Let Die\u201d with a second ELO tune, but can you hate it? Only in the same way you can hate a McDonald\u2019s shake for making you fat while you guzzle down every last drop.<\/p>\n

And so American Hustle<\/i> is evidence that the Scorsese formula works, that catchy songs from the \u201970s played over gunfights is just too great to not watch, and that swooping cameras and well-paid demigods are second only to, like, Snuggies and Netflix.<\/p>\n

But what must be noted is that American Hustle<\/i> is only parroting (and at times parodying) the depth of Goodfellas <\/i>(1990) or the violent debauchery of Casino <\/i>(1995), and that director David O. Russell is so keen on making a film that has every twist and turn planned out, as though he feels that if he lets the film out of his hands for even a second it will all come crashing down and everyone will see that it was him behind the curtain the whole time. Scorsese\u2019s films seem to move effortlessly, as though he is merely showing us something that has been there the whole time\u2014American Hustle<\/i> is smooth too, but only because it thinks it has to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

American Hustle 3\/5 It\u2019s got it all\u2014the look, the themes, the grit, the style. It\u2019s got the million-dollar soundtrack and the multi-million-dollar stars\u2014beautiful stars, talented stars, stars willing to gain 40-plus pounds for their roles. It\u2019s got the energy a period crime drama should, and more talent behind it than seems possible. But American Hustle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13760,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,184],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-issuemarch-1-2017"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13759"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13804,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13759\/revisions\/13804"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}