American Hustle Review

David O. Russell keeps the camera moving and the actors loud, and for ninety minutes that energy stands in convincingly for a plot. The opening shot of Bale assembling his comb over, glue and pressed hair and one careful sweep, explains the film faster than any of the Abscam machinery does. He is genuinely good as Irving, a man whose one honest possession is his feeling for Sydney, and Amy Adams matches him with an English accent she picks up and drops like a tool.

Jennifer Lawrence is miscast by about fifteen years and still walks off with every scene she is in, the science oven monologue above all. Jeremy Renner gives Carmine Polito the only warmth in the picture. What sinks it is shapelessness. Russell shot reams of improvisation and then declined to choose, so the middle hour circles the same three beats, Bradley Cooper's perm gets more attention than his motives, and the final con registers as an assertion rather than a reveal.

The period surfaces are lovingly done and the needle drops were expensive. Clutter is not the same thing as texture, and this film keeps hoping nobody will notice the difference.