David O. Russell is one of those directors that likes to spin a lot of plates, so when he fails he does so quite spectacularly. He’s trying to recapture that same magic from American Hustle here, but the string breaks quickly because he’s just unable to drum up any interesting material. The narrative isn’t compelling, emotionally it doesn’t do much (it’s not very funny or moving), it’s too heavy on exposition and the characters are only mildly interesting. Still, I like what this eventually gets to on a deeper level about the relationship between corporatism and fascism, you can’t accuse it of playing it safe. Christian Bale does a great job, but the other performances aren’t that strong. For example, you can hear Margot Robbie’s accent slip through, the Taylor Swift stunt casting was a bad idea and even John David Washington’s acting is very one note. I appreciate that there’s a lot of production value on the screen, but it probably would’ve looked a lot better if Emmanuel Lubezki hadn’t dropped a teabag in the film processing chemicals.
Shout by JordyVIP 8BlockedParent2023-05-21T19:53:44Z
David O. Russell is one of those directors that likes to spin a lot of plates, so when he fails he does so quite spectacularly. He’s trying to recapture that same magic from American Hustle here, but the string breaks quickly because he’s just unable to drum up any interesting material. The narrative isn’t compelling, emotionally it doesn’t do much (it’s not very funny or moving), it’s too heavy on exposition and the characters are only mildly interesting. Still, I like what this eventually gets to on a deeper level about the relationship between corporatism and fascism, you can’t accuse it of playing it safe. Christian Bale does a great job, but the other performances aren’t that strong. For example, you can hear Margot Robbie’s accent slip through, the Taylor Swift stunt casting was a bad idea and even John David Washington’s acting is very one note. I appreciate that there’s a lot of production value on the screen, but it probably would’ve looked a lot better if Emmanuel Lubezki hadn’t dropped a teabag in the film processing chemicals.
3.5/10