Despite its ambition ‘Amsterdam’ falls short

      Director David O. Russell doesn’t always make things easy for himself — or for an audience.

      In Amsterdam, Russell aims big, offering a tilted comic take on a serious subject: the volatile political climate in America just after World War I and before World War II. 

    Creating a drama that swirls with plot and artifice in the early going, the story avoids disclosing its point until its final act when Russell not only clarifies what he’s been doing but tacks on an unconvincing message about the importance of love and kindness.

    That’s a mouthful of meaning and Amsterdam can't quite swallow it whole -- even with help from a strong cast that revolves around Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, and David Washington.

   Bale, Robbie, and Washington play characters who meet during World War I. Assigned to lead a company of black soldiers, Bale's Dr. Burt Berendsen develops a lasting friendship with Washington’s Harold Woodman, who returns from the war to become a lawyer in New York City.

   After the war, Burt helps combat-disfigured vets reconstruct their faces using replacement parts that cover gaping wounds but have a stitched-together look that, to push a point, reflects the movie’s fractured soul. Berendsen’s patients are patchworks.

   Berendsen also suffered grave war injuries. He has a glass eye that Russell uses in comic fashion, abetted by Bale whose hair rises from his head like a garden of untended weeds.

   Married to a woman (Andrea Riseborough) whose family can't abide his mixed breed (Catholic/Jewish) origins, Burt struggles along until he and Harold are drawn into the mystery that propels the movie -- albeit in fitful fashion. 

  The movie's central trio is supposed to discover who killed their beloved military commander, a decent fellow played by Ed Begley Jr.

   Washington plays things fairly straight. During the war, Harold falls for Robbie’s Valerie Voze, a free-spirited nurse who creates art from shrapnel she removes from the bodies of wounded soldiers.

   In a playful interlude the three main characters travel to Amsterdam to recover from the war. Burt and Harold decide to return home, even though they might have continued to live with joyful abandon in Europe. 

   For a time, it seems that Amsterdam’s production design has been influenced by Wes Anderson, who specializes in creating environments that insist on existing on their own terms.

   Amsterdam features a host of talent in its supporting roles, too many to name here. I’ll highlight a few. Michael Shannon stands out as a CIA agent who works with a British secret agent (Mike Meyers). Bird lovers both, they make a fine comic duo.

   In the movie's third act, Russell introduces Robert De Niro as if he were a hole card being turned over by a gambler late in the game.

   De Niro appears as General Gil Dillenbeck, the most decorated marine in American history. American fascists and Hitler supporters are trying to turn Dillenbeck into a frontman for a coup.

    About three quarters of the way through a journey that sometimes seems mapless,  Rami Malek and Anya Taylor-Joy turn up as the bother and sister-in-law of Robbie’s Valerie.

   Loosely based on real events, the movie eventually whips comedy and thriller elements into a political cautionary tale with obvious relevance to the current political environment in which some view elections as inconveniences.

  Fair to say that Russell needlessly complicated a story that might have benefited from more straightforward telling. Besides this period of American unease has been dealt with elsewhere, notably in Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America, which turned into an even better HBO series.

   For me, the always adventurous Bale and Robbie are the mainstays of a movie that tries to capture the ingrained absurdity of human interactions during moments of high stress. Think the Marx Brothers only not as funny and without the anarchic glee.

  Amsterdam doesn’t match Russell’s best work in movies such as Three Kings and American Hustle. Sure, the performances can be tasty but this oddly realized movie often has the feel of an interesting fellow who answers the doorbell without first pulling himself together.

 

'American Hustle' is the real deal

This is one movie that won't con you when it comes to enjoyment.

I don't know if American Hustle is the best movie of the year, but it's definitely one of the most enjoyable.

Director David O'Russell's exuberant foray into the world of con men and corruption was inspired by the real-life Abscam scandal of the 1970s. In that ugly chapter of recent American history, an FBI investigation -- aided by a con man -- led to a sting that resulted in the conviction of six congressman and a New Jersey senator.

If you're unfamiliar with Abscam, you needn't bother to look it up: The movie's link to real life events is a bit tenuous and ultimately unimportant: American Hustle is best seen as a movie about the spirit of the '70s, as well as a look at some of the more colorful characters the decade spawned.

American Hustle also features some of the year's best acting, much of it from actors who also appeared in Russell's equally enjoyable Silver Linings Playbook.
Christian Bale -- a reported 50 pounds overweight and sporting one of the worst hairpieces in the history of hairpieces (if there is such a thing) -- plays Irving Rosenfeld, a small-time chiseler who also runs a chain of dry cleaning stores in the Bronx.

At a party, Irving finds his a soulmate. She's Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams), a former stripper who's able to pass herself off as an English woman of culture and distinction.

Sydney responds to Irving's love of Duke Ellington. Why not? If she gets Ellington, there's a good chance she'll get Irving, too. Irving quickly falls in love with Sydney: His spirits are buoyed by her ability to help him elevate his game. He begins to blossom -- and so does his criminal activity.

Of course, Irving isn't entirely free. He happens to be married to a busty woman (Jennifer Lawrence) who's constantly nagging him about one thing or another and with whom he shares an adopted son.

The usually intense Bale seems to be having fun for a change, and I'm not sure that Adams ever has had a better role. Her Sydney is attractive, smart and skillful at striking almost any pose.

Lawrence again proves that she's a terrific actress. Her Rosalyn is a bombshell who spills out of dresses in ways that seem as uncontrollable as her character's eruptive mind.

The plot heats up when Irving and Sydney are busted. Richie DiMaso -- an ambitious FBI agent played by a tightly permed Bradley Cooper -- offers to let this morally dubious duo walk if Irving and Sydney help him make four major busts. They agree, and the movie turns into a comic mystery about who actually might be getting conned.

Russell directs with a zest that seems to have filtered into Cooper's performance, which is full of lewd energies and cocky swagger. A subdued Louis C.K. offers counterpoint as Richie's far more conservative boss.

Russell allows Irving and Sydney to take turns narrating the movie, a stylistic ploy that adds to fun. Russell isn't interested in a Rashomon-like shift in perspectives: He's more interested in taking us inside the world of characters we alternately find appalling and lovable.

And that's the key to what Russell accomplishes: Irving has likable qualities. He can be boorish, but he's also capable of caring about people in ways that feel real. There's a sense of true, live-and-let-live tolerance about him.

To demonstrate this, the screenplay, by Russell and Eric Singer, shows Irving developing a real friendship with Carmine Politio (Jeremy Renner), a New Jersey mayor whose corruption stems from an apparently genuine desire to serve his constituents and create jobs. He wants money to rebuild Atlantic City, still a gambling mecca in waiting.

At one point, Carmine expresses his affection for Irving by giving him a microwave oven. Having never seen one before, the befuddled Irving refers to it as "a science oven."

Liberated from the world of munitions (The Hurt Locker) and action (Mission Impossible -- Ghost Protocol), Renner piles on a robust helping of good-fella charm.

Remember, Irving's no dope. His meeting with a genuine gangster (a late-picture cameo from Robert De Niro) confirms what he already knows: Irving recognizes that he's better at small cons than big ones. He understands his limitations.

At some point -- maybe about three-quarters of the way through -- the picture loses a bit of steam, and I found myself worrying that Russell might not be able to pull the whole thing together. I think he does, and -- in the process -- creates one of the few movies of 2013 that I was sorry to see end.

A Philly-based romance to love

Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence create some of the year's best chemistry in Silver Linings Playbook.

Movies don't have to be perfect to be loved. It's a good thing, too, or we might never love anything that reached the big screen. Because it's a romantic comedy that spits in formula's eye, because it's built around winning performances and because it successfully mixes humor with a bit of edgy drama, Silver Linings Playbook deserves a big hunk of audience love.

From the movie's opening, it's clear that we've never seen Bradley Cooper (of Hangover fame) in this kind of role. In an early image, we see Cooper's Pat Solitano talking to himself. As the movie progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that Pat has lots of high-speed conversations bouncing around his head.

Pat, we also discover, is about to be released from a mental institution. He's in the up-cycle of a bipolar affliction, and somehow has convinced himself that he's going to find the silver lining in every cloud that has or ever will hang over him.

Pat was sent to the institution as part of a plea bargaining deal. Eight months earlier, he arrived home to find his English-teacher wife in the shower with a history teacher. Pat, a substitute history teacher, lost control and nearly beat the man to death.

Director David O. Russell's character-rich comedy distinguishes itself by throwing away both the romcom and mental-illness-drama play books as it encounters life's absurdities and celebrates its saving graces.

Pat's mother (Jacki Weaver) picks him up at the institution, and brings him home. Pat's father (Robert De Niro) is appropriately concerned about his emotionally tipsy son, a guy who's liable to erupt in anger when he hears Stevie Wonder's My Cherie Amour, the song he and his wife chose for their wedding.

Obsessively determined, Pat has one goal. He wants to win back his wife Nikki (Brea Bee), a task made more difficult by the restraining order that she has taken out against him.

I know. It may not sound like it, but Silver Linings Playbook is most assuredly a comedy, although it sometimes pushes the definition to a breaking point.

Hopes for Pat's recovery don't look particularly promising because he refuses to take his meds and because he's not entirely convinced that he needs to do anything more than stay positive.

He's also not keenly self-aware, which may explain why Pat jogs through his neighborhood in sweats covered by a plastic garbage bag. It has something to do with trying to lose more weight. Nikki thought he was getting too flabby. But a garbage bag?

As part of his battle plan, Pat goes on a reading jag: He tries to devour every book on the syllabus his English-teaching wife uses. He retreats to his attic room and reads Hemingway's Farewell to Arms. But rather than being moved by the book's powerfully sad ending, he's outraged. He wakes his parents at four in the morning to rant about the fact that Hemingway couldn't bring himself to write a happy ending for his story about love and war.

For Pat, nothing feels more urgent than whatever emotion he happens to be experiencing, whatever thought pops into his head. He's locked inside himself.

Based on a novel by Matthew Quick, the screenplay has more in mind than chronicling Pat's dissent into mental illness. At a dinner with old friends (John Ortiz and Julia Stiles), Pat meets his match, a young neighborhood woman (Jennifer Lawrence) with a slutty reputation and a penchant for honesty. For a while, it looks as if the screenplay is going to pit one against the other in a contest to see who's crazier, Lawrence's widowed Tiffany or Cooper's tightly wound Pat.

It takes an adventurous director such as Russell (Flirting with Disaster, Three Kings and The Fighter) to keep a movie such as Silver Linings Playbook from blowing up in its own face.

Russell doesn't shy away from some of the drama that's bound to be produced in a situation involving mental illness. The police are frequent visitors to the Solitano household. But he also has a firm grip on the comedy that's lodged in the Solitano family dynamic, and he gives the story an ample helping of Philly soul.

The story also introduces us to Pat's therapist (Anupam Kher); his older brother (Shea Whigham) and a variety of others; Chris Tucker plays a friend Pat meets during his eight month stint in the mental ward.

But the movie's beating heart belongs to Cooper and Lawrence, who create some of the year's most interesting chemistry.

Cooper never has been better; and Lawrence proves herself a sexy force of nature as a woman who (in my old neighborhood) would have been said to "have a real mouth on her."

De Niro excels as a compulsive and extremely superstitious Philadelphia Eagles' fan and part-time bookmaker; Weaver (familiar from Animal Kingdom) is fine as his long-suffering wife, a woman who generally tries to see things through the silver linings that her son says he hopes to find.

When I tell you that Silver Linings Playbook builds toward a dance contest (no, I'm not kidding), your guard rightly should go up. Trust me. This is not a typical, end-of-movie contest, and Silver Linings Playbook is no run-of-the-mill romcom.

You may find reason to carp about Silver Linings Playbook, but remember what I said at the outset: Love -- as Pat and Tiffany amply demonstrate -- is far from perfect. Still, there'd be a lot fewer movies, if we didn't believe that it beats the hell out of the next best thing.