After experimenting a little with genre, filmmaker David O. Russell has settled into a career of making dialogue-driven comedic dramas. Some of his efforts are more successful than others – the less we say about Joy the better, and I defy anyone to remember what the hell happened in American Hustle – but they still attract attention because Russell manages to draw big actors to his projects. Amsterdam continues in that tradition, with Russell reaching further into the past than he ever has. Early reviews call the film mediocre or an outright fiasco, which is overstating the case a little. The film does not reach the highs of Russell’s best work – he has a marked disinterest in fare like Flirting with Disaster or Three Kings – and yet its consistent note of modest, wistful charm is difficult to maintain.
It is the early 1930s in New York City, and while there is no sense of the Depression, the unspoken specter of fascism looms in the shadows. Our point-of-view character is Burt (Christian Bale), a doctor and veteran of the Great War who has visible scars, including a glass eye. After the mysterious death of a US senator, the politician’s daughter (Taylor Swift) asks Burt to perform an autopsy. He agrees, bringing along his best friend and business partner Harold (John David Washington), and they discover some malfeasance. The senator was poisoned, but before they uncover the assassination plot, his daughter dies in gruesome fashion (Swift’s death scene is brusquely funny). Witnesses implicate Harold and Burt in the crime, and by clearing their name, they discover a conspiracy that just might upend American life as they know it.
All these events happen rather quickly, setting the story in motion so Russell can pursue his actual interests. Amsterdam is a celebration of American eccentricity, and that’s never clearer than during a flashback sequence where Burt and Harold become friends. While convalescing from gruesome war wounds, they meet Valerie (Margot Robbie), an American nurse pretending to be French, and the trio becomes inseparable. Thanks to a wife back home, Burt has no romantic feelings toward Valerie, which means Harold is free to pursue a non-platonic relationship with her. This leads to Amsterdam’s greatest pleasure: Robbie and Washington have genuine sexual chemistry, something that is all too rare in mainstream American movies nowadays, and their scenes together bristle with tension and a sense of longing. While Bale leans into familiar shtick and mannerisms, the other co-leads find something more recognizably human that sustains the film.
There is a long, long middle section in Amsterdam where Burt, Harold and Valerie wander through New York society in order to find the shadowy figures behind the senator’s death. Russell uses this as an opportunity to fill out his formidable supporting cast: Rami Malek, Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Rock, Michael Shannon and Andrea Riseborough all have significant roles, and that’s only a fraction of the notable actors the filmmaker assembled. With the main trio as the moral center, these standalone scenes flush out the political milieu of the period: veterans of the Great War are paragons of virtue, ones who take any encroachment to democracy personally (there is an anti-racist streak to the film that is self-serving, albeit ahistorical). Either way, corruption gets more pervasive as the heroes penetrate the upper echelons of society, until they find a retired General (Robert De Niro) who agrees to serve as bait to expose those at the top of the senator’s murder.
Although the plot is somewhat similar to Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, Russell does not have much interest in suspense. Instead, he and his actors want to study contrasts. All the good guys, including some bizarre spies with a penchant for bird-watching, have shared values and latent skepticism of the obscenely wealthy. It is in these sections where Russell’s approach starts to falter: he has a penchant for speeches and a didactic streak, leading to several scenes where Bale and the others outline exactly what the audience should take away from the film. At best, the final 20 minutes are necessary. At worst, they are an implied insult, as if Russell thinks we cannot understand that, gee whiz, past attempts to install an American dictator just might have resonance today.
The conspiracy in Amsterdam is based a real one from 1933 called “The Business Plot.” Russell takes extreme liberties, as he did with American Hustle, which is just as well since a more accurate film would bore him. In formal terms, again Russell’s choices are actor-centric: while the production design and muted brown photography serve the material, the film has a marked interest in faces, make-up and costumes. Just as one example, Bale’s character in The Big Short also had a glass eye, but here he and Russell want to make sure just how convincing it looks. But for all the mannered Mid-Atlantic accents and bespoke fashion, nothing captures the imagination quite like Robbie and Washington, who suggest actual affection and desire. Despite the dense procedural and political details, the simple pleasure of two stars doing what only they can do best is what finally makes Amsterdam old-fashioned in the way Russell intended all along.
Photo courtesy of 20th Century Studios
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