American Hustle

With American Hustle David Russell counters F. Scott Fitzgerald’s claim that in America there are no second acts. His major characters live out the American Dream that people can reinvent themselves, sometimes over and over, to the point that deceiving others can lead to their self-deception. This fictionalized version of the Abscam sting reveals a world of Sammy Glicks. This is America as hustler.

The opening scene establishes the theme of deceptive appearance. Irving Rosenfeld (an himself transformed Christian Bale) laboriously engineers a pathetic comb-over. After this ridiculous introduction he grows into a very sympathetic character. Despite the range of his criminal enterprises, he cares for his adopted son, he’s smart enough to fall for the smart con-woman Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams) and he has the conscience to try to save his new friend, the mayor Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner). The film redefines Irving from ridiculous to admirable — albeit within the parameters of self-serving fraud. Even at his worst — preying on the desperate by commanding a five grand fee for the futile attempt to secure them a much larger loan — he remains more sympathetic than the greed-driven and impersonal banks of America. (For that egregious sterility there is no comb-over.)
      And the amoral but righteous FBI agent who exploits him. Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) is a working class loser with violent tendencies who goes manic trying to advance his career. Where Irving and Sydney remember who they are DiMaso fools himself through the schemes and deceptions he tries to command. His vanity and ambition are baser than Irving’s and Sydney’s desire to rise out of their limited origins. As Irving says, “Did you ever have to find a way to survive and you knew your choices were bad, but you had to survive?” We’re satisfied that the lovers win and DiMaso loses. Irving and Sydney meet and first connect over their shared love of a blues song, but one without words, Ellington’s Jeep’s Blues. In the con’s world words are less reliable than music.

DiMaso’s vanity and superficiality (as in his curling his hair) align with Irving’s wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence, reinventing herself a world away from her Hunger Games competence). Where Irving and Sydney remake themselves “from the feet up,” i.e., intensely and completely, Rosalyn only remakes her image. She spends all her time doing her hair and her nails and frying under the sunlamp. Her rationalization of her betrayal of Irving is a transparent self-deception. At the end she achieves what she had refused — divorcing Irving — and settles in with a supposedly more devoted lover, the second-line mafiosa. At the end Irving and Sydney rewrite themselves again, as a couple, as parents of Rosalyn’s son, and professionally legitimated as owners of — an art gallery, where the themes of crooked dealing, exploitation and the sale of an image over reality are likely to be renewed.

Russell’s interest is as usual primarily in his characters. The complexities of the snaking plot work to     reveal the characters’ depths and discoveries. As in Silver Linings Playbook he uncovers love in the most unlikely characters, who find a mutual refuge against a dangerous cold world. In a comic replay of the major characters’ self-reinvention, the fake wealthy sheik is a Mexican who as it happens learned enough Arabic to get by the scrutiny of the Mafia head Tellegio (Robert DeNiro, reinventing himself as his earlier gangster invention).

Like the intriguing characters in their various stings, Mayor Polito has made a political career out of hustling -- albeit for his constituents. The FBI here is itself implicated in the crooked hustle when DiMaso coerces our two chief cons into working for him, to con for the government. In the FBI there is one solid man of conscience and principle, played by the inveterate schnook Louis CK, when all his colleagues and superiors espouse the con. In an America that is all hustle, it is still possible for an honest person to survive, however beaten and betrayed — and for hustlers to define their own integrity.