
We found AMSTERDAM rather loveable. David O.Russell is an erratic talent/person, it seems. Still haven’t risked a look at JOY, but I was impressed by THREE KINGS, I HEART HUCKABEES, AMERICAN HUSTLE, SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK. THE FIGHTER was OK. If you like the same ones as me (I still haven’t seen the earlier ones) you might like this.
You might not like the fact that the coda is ten minutes too long, or that New York seems strangely depopulated (but beautiful at night), or that the titular city is just interiors. You might object to Christian Bale doing a straight-up Peter Falk imitation — playing a one-eyed New Yorker he could probably have found a more original way to go, but on the other hand there are not and never could be enough Peter Falk performances, so having one more, even an ersatz one, is a treat to me. You might not like the way the joins are so visible between the true story from which the film derives, and the fictional elements grafted on. You might wish they’d had the courage to name names, specifically those of the business leaders behind the actual conspiracy — but legally, they couldn’t because the movie’s plot makes the bad guys murderers, which in real life they weren’t. To point the finger properly, the movie would have to hew closer to the facts of the case.

What I liked was the, to me, touching, friendship between Bale’s character and Margot Robbie and John David Washington’s. The plot is an adequate means of getting them in motion, and has modern resonances. The film covers the same historical span as JULES ET JIM and features a comparable trio. But never resorts to slavish pastiche or pilferage. The supporting cast is tremendous. It’s one of the few dramas to manage to incorporate a Mike Myers performance (even Tarantino, who whatever his faults generally gets everyone singing from the same hymnbookor him-book, couldn’t manage that one). Here, MM sticks out, but only slightly, helped by Michael Shannon shifting phase into a more comically stylised mode as his chief playing partner. Rami Malek and Anya Taylor-Joy are fun. There is a supporting actor called Baxter Humby, reason enough to buy a ticket, or at least to read this review.
Baxter Humby, Shadowplay salutes you!
Russell’s work, from a visual perspective, benefits from being pushed to extremes, and here it could have done with an added shove in the edit. We may make fun of George Lucas’ sole direction to his STAR WARS cast, “faster, more intense,” but it’s a good note for many occasions. Possibly the fact that HUCKABEES wasn’t a hit has hurt DOR’s confidence a bit — his more stylistically extreme film and one of the most satisfying, its failure may have curbed the excesses of a filmmaker who lives on excess, or ought to. It sometimes feels like the cast are performing inside little boxes, with insufficient master shot around them to bind everything together. Occasionally a wild Steadicam master will obtrude, and feel like something from a different movie. Possibly there were at one time more of these and they got the chop for not working, leaving scenes to struggle along as disconnected closeups.
I seem to have a lot of qualms and quibbles but while the movie was unfolding I was mostly in a state of mild bliss.