AMERICAN HUSTLE Stars galore! Costumes galore! Beige galore! Plus Jennifer Lawrence’s side-boob!
  • AMERICAN HUSTLE Stars galore! Costumes galore! Beige galore! Plus Jennifer Lawrence’s side-boob!

Christian Bale has transformed himself in all sorts of ways, but his turn as Irving Rosenfeld is something else again. It's such a striking transformation that the camera can't tear away from Bale's body throughout the opening scene of American Hustle. His pasty beer gut juts forward proudly, suggesting chronic constipation. We watch him construct a mind-boggling comb-over that another character describes as "elaborate." He dresses like a clown, all loud prints and ascots and wide lapels and materials that can't support even the barest suggestion of a natural fiber. But Bale instinctually finds the dignity in Rosenfeld, a two-bit hustler from the Bronx. At least he's got a realistic sense of scale. Rosenfeld sells counterfeit artwork and scams people out of a few thousand dollars at a time. Nothing grandiose, nothing fancy.

Bale leads a cast of excellent actors who are becoming regulars in David O. Russell productions: Bradley Cooper is Richie DiMaso, a jittery FBI agent with a tightly wound perm; Jennifer Lawrence is a lively young mother who knows her big mouth will be the thing that keeps people paying attention to her long after her looks are gone. Robert De Niro makes a short but spectacular appearance. And some new names are added to the Russell Regular Role Call: Louis C.K. and Michael Peña have small but important parts, Jeremy Renner plays the good-hearted goombah mayor of Camden, New Jersey, and most notably, Amy Adams stars as Rosenfeld's partner in crime, an ambitious con artist named Sydney Prosser.

It's hard to pull off a con movie these days, when the impulse to get too elaborate has taken over. Sometimes big and dumb works (Ocean's Eleven) and sometimes it doesn't (Matchstick Men). But Hustle shares Rosenfeld's good sense of perspective, even as its cons enlarge to contain several reversals of fortune and shifts in scope and size....

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