Summary
Crime caper based on a true story, starring Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence. A pair of con artists are forced by an FBI agent to take part in a sting operation to bring down a crooked politician.
Crime caper based on a true story, starring Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence. A pair of con artists are forced by an FBI agent to take part in a sting operation to bring down a crooked politician.
Opening with an enigmatic disclaimer stating that "Some of this actually happened", American Hustle begins as most 1970s-set crime capers do, with a flurry of obvious wigs, polyester suits and iconic chart music from the period. Unusually for the genre, however, it quickly reveals itself as an intelligent and deceptively self-aware character piece, with a New York conman (Christian Bale) and his lover/partner (Amy Adams) forced into assisting the FBI as penance for a series of loan frauds. Foregrounding the film's artificiality, writer/director David O Russell (The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook) uses his A-list cast to create a kind of adult pantomime, in which allegiances switch constantly and no one is ever quite who they seem. As is typical in a Hollywood movie, the two men - Bale and Bradley Cooper, as the FBI wild card - drive the story, but it is the women that provide the substance. Adams is terrific, playing Cooper off against Bale and vice versa, but Jennifer Lawrence steals the show as Bale's wife, a likeable ditz whose loose-lipped tendencies might at any minute instigate a bloodbath.
role | name |
---|---|
Irving Rosenfeld | Christian Bale |
Richie DiMaso | Bradley Cooper |
Sydney Prosser | Amy Adams |
Rosalyn Rosenfeld | Jennifer Lawrence |
Mayor Carmine Polito | Jeremy Renner |
Pete Musane | Jack Huston |
Stoddard Thorsen | Louis CK |
Victor Tellegio | Robert De Niro |
Paco Hernandez | Michael Pena |
Dolly Polito | Elisabeth Röhm |
Brenda | Colleen Camp |
Carl Elway | Shea Whigham |
Anthony Amado | Alessandro Nivola |
Irv's sheikh plant | Saïd Taghmaoui |
Senator Horton Mitchell | Anthony Zerbe |
Street thug | Dicky Eklund |
role | name |
---|---|
Director | David O Russell |