Thoughts about "American Hustle"

Completely lost amidst of exams, paper dues, work and deadlines, I am quite late to see movies nominated for 86th Academy Award. Feeling absolutely bad about it, several days ago I finally managed to watch "American Hustle", American crime-drama nominated for ten Oscars this year.
The movie is directed by David O. Russel with Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Amy Adams and Jeniffer Lawrence starring. The movie has already won three Golden Globe Awards, and three BAFTA Awards among other achievements which are quite attractive facts to drive movie-maniacs crazy.
The film begins with an unusual on screen message "Some of this actually happened." This refers to Abscam operation, which led to the conviction of a US Senator, six members of the US House of Representatives in late 1970s. Even there are some elements inspired by this operation, the 120 minutes long movie does not necessarily follow Abscam's storyline.

- This whole thing is racist. Abscam? "Arab-scam"? It's completely racist! -So what do you have to worry about, Sheik? You're Mexican.

The movie can be considered quite slow and long, but in my opinion it is wonderfully acted and filmed. What made the movie memorable for me was the standout performance by the main five cast members (Bale, Adams, Cooper, Lawrence, Renner). It was quite hard to recognize Bale - he gained around 20 kgs for his role as a con man, Irving Rosenfeld. His character is this con man who is just happy in his world of small hustles and lies, and who is afraid of big plans. This character is shown from various perspectives in the movie which makes him quite memorable for the audience: he is a man in unhappy marriage, but also knows what true love is, he is a responsible father even though the kid is not his biological son, he is witty enough to move the plan forward, but also afraid to take risks. Two incredible ladies - Amy Adams and Jeniffer Lawrence completely stole the show with their genius acting, and did a solid job in creating the inner world, insecurities, pains and loves of the women of their society. For me at the scenes where Lawrence fights with Bale in the bedroom and with Amy in the bathroom, Lawrence was at the pick of her talent and proved once more that she deserves all the movie awards of the world.

Well, he must like it on some level. He must want it, because he keeps coming back for it. It's like that perfume that you love, that you can't stop smelling even when there's something sour in it.

Another big plus of the movie was definitely well chosen soundtracks which were utterly breathtaking and did fantastic job in retrieving the soul and mood of 1970s. Blue Moon by Oscar Petersen, I've Got Your Number by Cy Coleman & Carolyn Leigh, The Coffee Song by Frank Sinatra, Don't Leave Me This Way by Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes, Delilah by Tom Jones and so many smooth, sexy, moody masterpieces will take your breath away while you watch the movie.

Follow this link for a complete playlist of the soundtracks

And some words about what I didn't like about the movie: First of all, as I mentioned in the very beginning the pace and the length of the movie should be seriously reconsider by the director and the movie crew in general. No matter how the well the actors are performing, the director should not ignore the strength of the plot. In fact an interesting plot can make actors' job way easy in terms of creating a movie that will last in the audience's mind for a long time.

Being a great lover of con/gangster movies for me this movie lacked some serious drama, crime and shooting. What it also lacked was a good humor. In fact, there was no humor put in the movie at all, except couple of lines by Lawrence.

Finally, for a con movie it was a very Disney-style happy ending - creativity was lacking. But happy ends are good in general :)