My Mildest Possible Defense of "Amsterdam", and thoughts on "American Hustle"

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 I could write up a simple and to-the-point review of David O. Russell's newest conspiracy comedy, "Amsterdam". Like his acclaimed 2013 hit "American Hustle", this film carries a stacked cast and a thin script. It is both a passable comedy and a positively incoherent retelling of a deeply dumb criminal plot. The actors are mostly just fine, and few are given much to do, but Rami Malek as the quiet smarmy villain is good enough to single out. The sets and costumes look impressive (and expensive!). I don't think I wasted my time streaming the movie, and I even enjoyed it in spaces, but I certainly don't think it's a must see.

 More interesting is trying to piece together how we got to this point, for everyone involved. David O. Russell got to this point by being a deeply awful person, who has behaved rudely and even violently to the stars of about half of his films. There's the groping his niece thing, which feels well beyond the allowable degree of gross but which Hollywood but which didn't seem to bother anyone when he was making "American Hustle". There have been rumors of him taking credit for scripts he didn't right. It sure does feel like he would have gotten away with all of it, if not for the infamous Sony email hack that laid bare how 1) he abused Amy Adams on that "American Hustle" set, and 2) producers knew that the groping his niece thing would be an issue and tried to find cover angles. 

 And hey, maybe that's not even really the problem here! Maybe his downfall happened because "Joy" was a flop. He abused George Clooney and Lily Tomlin on film sets, and everyone knows he did this, and still between 2010 and 2013 he made 3 films that added up to 24 Oscar nominations, including Russell personally getting Best Director nods for all three. Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro, and Christian Bale were all members of that "American Hustle" production debacle, and all were willing to work with him again afterwards. But "Joy" both failed to make money and failed to win awards (it received one Oscar nomination for Jennifer Lawrence's performance). Russell was tossed into directors jail for 7 years, and his first film back was dumped by the studio, even though they spent $80 million making the damn thing. 

 How did the cast of "Amsterdam" end up in "Amsterdam"? Russell has always been known for recruiting all-star casts, but he really outdid himself here. A handful of award winning actors, a baffling minor role for global superstar celebrity and ostensible feminist Taylor Swift, the return of Christian Bale to the D.O.R. stable after he took credit for standing up on Amy Adams' behalf, the first Mike Myers appearance in a movie in 4 years (totally wasted, he gets nothing funny to say), Zoe Saldana shows up for a few unimportant minutes between shooting Marvel sequels and Avatar sequels, Chris Rock in his first post-slap role, this ensemble is absurd. Emmanuel Lubezki shot "Amsterdam", his first credit since 2017. On some level I have to ask why so many people, who could take any role they wanted to, wanted to work with someone so notorious for being difficult on the job. Notable people not in it: Jennifer Lawrence, who supposedly was going to play the role that went to Margot Robbie, and Michael B Jordan, who was signed on to play the role that went to John David Washington. 

 Why did the critics treat this so harshly? It would be easy to say that it's a bad movie, simple as, but I'm not really satisfied with that. The whole thing feels like a slightly worse "American Hustle", and I didn't love that film so much, but it was among the most acclaimed releases of the year. 10 Oscar nominations and a 90 Metacritic score for a movie with a totally incoherent story and dialogue that only survives because of the actors delivering it. I can't figure out what would posses a person to call that brilliant and this awful. Maybe that one was always overrated? David O Russell has made good movies. I would credit him for two great ones, even: "Three Kings", which is startling as sharp commentary on the Gulf War's impact on Iraqis and came out years before the Iraq War, and "Silver Linings Playbook", which is so small and precise that it barely feels like D.O.R. at all. The rest of his films tend to embrace mess. The actors look messy, they shout all the time to express how messy their lives are, and on the narrative level the scripts are messy. What's missing here? The performances (except Bale) are more subtle. Nobody is hamming it up nearly as much as Lawrence and Cooper were in that series of collaborations. That doesn't feel like a flaw, but I suppose that's what people watch Russell for. As much as everyone correctly hates David O Russell for everything he's done as a person, the deep down truth is that nobody wants to see him mellowed out. His over the top idiosyncrasies are what made his movies stand out in the first place.

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