American Hustle (Cinema Screening)

(Spoilers)

Just before seeing this film I sat and thought to myself, I actually don’t really know what this film is about.  Is that a bad or a good thing, a bit of both I suppose, depends what way you look at it.  Although I think film can be more fun if approached in this manner and to be honest it was simply the big names in the cast that attracted me to this film.

American Hustle starts slow, and it continues on with this pace for the majority of the film.  For me this was the film’s biggest issue, it had no pace and the story dragged on – if thirty minutes had been cut from this movie they would not have been missed.  At times I did find the whole thing a bit boring.  However one thing kept me interested and always lifted me during those really dull moments and that was the storyline of Rosalyn played by the wonderful Jennifer Lawrence.  Hands down the best character in the whole film, Lawrence plays this character so well and without the inclusion of this character and quite possibly without Lawrence playing her this film would have been completely lost on me.  The best scene involved Rosalyn trying to work a ‘science oven’, this scene made me laugh a lot and was the highlight of the film for me.  Although a close second to this was another of Rosalyn’s scenes; when she was cleaning and singing along to Live and Let Die, just fantastic.  The exact thought I had at this moment was ‘wife me’ – as you can tell I liked Jennifer Lawrence.

Saying that the rest of the cast were also fantastic, all of them put in great performances and you can tell that a lot of them seem to be at their acting best at the minute.  Humour does feature in American Hustle too, it comes in sporadic doses but when it comes it is welcomed and it is genuinely funny which was good.  However this does not compensate for me that the way in which this story is told was just too boring for me, okay the inclusion of the humour and Rosalyn helped me during the film but it doesn’t mean that I forgot it – so for me does not solve the issue.

Also if I am honest I did not understand a lot of this film, I understand that I am probably in a minority here.  However for me I found it hard to keep track of what all the characters intentions were and who knew what etc.  This was a barrier to my enjoyment so I feel that if I watched it again and someone could explain to me I may enjoy it more, however the fact is I don’t think I will watch it again. I know that people will love this film, I personally just didn’t appreciate to the same level as others will, so I don’t doubt that this is a good film however give me a cheap action film over this any day!  Oh, something I did appreciate though was at the start instead of it saying ‘Based on true events’ aka we took one plot point and fabricated a whole film around it, instead it said ‘some of this actually did happen’ – I thought that was an honest and humorous take on the whole intro.

BIGGEST FLAW – Slow pace

BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT – Rosalyn/Jennifer Lawrence

Oh and clearly bras had not been invented whenever this film was set, like seriously no one wears them!

Rating – 6.5/10