Film Review | American Hustle

America is the place you want to go to fulfil your dreams or get a fresh start in life. That, at least, has been how the continent was perceived in the popular imagination for the longest time.

Partly owing to the fact that it's both relatively new and prosperous, this myth took root and has sprouted generously ever since. There may be a smidgeon of truth to it, of course: its power structures just don't have the weight of history behind them. To wit, there aren't as many aristocratic (or indeed bureaucratic) boundaries there as there are in Europe, so that with hard work, determination and a healthy sprinkling of luck here and there, theoretically anyone would be allowed to flourish in the New World (or so the story goes).

But this lack of checks and balances also means that charismatic swindlers can worm their way to the system with relative ease. When money - as opposed to status and family connections - are the primary conduit to power, what is apparently democratising can also rapidly spiral into a reptilian free-for-all.

This was more or less proven as unassailable fact after the global financial recession hit, and Hollywood was surprisingly quick to respond to this apparent malaise. Perhaps this is because the narratives had been embedded in our culture for quite some time. Nevermind Oliver Stone's Wall Street (1987), the collapse of ambitious, powerful men - their fuel being money or whatever else - has been familiar to us for a while thanks to the likes of the Ancient Greek playwrights, down to Shakespeare and countless others.

Martin Scorcese did it with much brio just this season, as The Wolf of Wall Street eviscerates the self-made stockbroker myth with brutal panache.

But though it's not directly connected with the financial infrastructure, David O. Russell's American Hustle is - as the title would suggest - also an acerbic exploration of the wheeling-and-dealing that appears to be second nature to American culture.

It's 1978, and a schlubby but charismatic con-man, Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) is swindling investors with fake scams, with substantial help from this British girlfriend Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams). When an ambitious and antsy FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) gets wise about their scheming, he blackmails them into collaborating with him on a high-profile sting.

The (loosely) based on real life ABSCAM ('Arab scam') involves worming into a gangster's money laundering operation, and DiMaso doesn't appear to know that he's in over his head. Particularly when he begins falling in love with Sydney. Though she appears glad to reciprocate, in this game of cross and double cross nothing is what it seems.

Previously a persona non grata in Hollywood - you can find his on-set scuffles with actress Lily Tomlin, during the filming of 2004 flop I Heart Huckabees, on YouTube - Russell rehabilitated his reputation with Oscar courting dramas The Fighter (2010) and Silver Linings Playbook (2012); both of which took fairly safe, heart-warming ideas of adversity bested and gave them a reverse-spit-polish of grit and darkness.

Which worked fine. But that's precisely the problem. Russell appears to know his ingredients quite well - and that includes a good grasp on his regular actors - but when it comes down to it, he's not all that great a chef.

American Hustle in particular is far less than the sum of its parts. Unlike Scorcese, who powers through his narratives with confidence and a blistering single-mindedness, Russell appears content to just let his individual set pieces stew, before bringing everything to an abrupt halt with a contrived twist (in a sea of other twists).

I don't make the comparison to Scorcese lightly. Apart from the financial scheming bearing the same DNA as the germ of The Wolf of Wall Street, the film follows the Goodfellas model almost to the letter: voiceover narration, rapid-fire dialogue between unapologetically amoral characters, evocative, pumping soundtrack... even Robert de Niro pops in for a cameo.

Russell's film suffers because of the inevitable comparison, and it doesn't offer all that much in return. Worse still, the grimy evocation of the late '70s draws comparison to another contemporary great: Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia, There Will Be Blood) - specifically, his porn-world expose Boogie Nights, which also deals with nervous wannabes willing to risk far too much to make something of themselves.

There's no arguing that American Hustle depicts a vivid world and packs in some great moments - including a firecracker turn from audience and Academy favourite Jennifer Lawrence - but a film that's ultimately as threadbare as this doesn't deserve an Oscar nomination... let alone 10.