Amsterdam (2022)
2/4
Despite what is known about David O. Russell as a person, I loved many of his films. American Hustle was my favourite movie of 2013; Silver Linings Playbook had Jennifer Lawrence’s best performances to date and a really funny script. So when I sat down with my popcorn to watch Amsterdam, I had high expectations. Unfortunately, those expectations were slashed when I saw this overwhelming film.
I’ll say this much: the cast is trying. I mean, Christian Bale, especially. He was the one bright spot of the movie. His character is quirky in just the right way, and I really appreciated that aspect of the film. Margot Robbie and John David Washington also deliver convincing performances that I quite enjoyed. The costume and art design does a fine job in conveying the film’s time period.
But everything else sucked.
The main problem with this movie was the script. This is supposed to be a murder mystery but the whole execution and how everything comes together is confusing. I still can’t put together what the movie was going for as far as mystery goes. Another thing that wasn’t clear was the characters’ motivations. Most of them are just there to dump exposition on the audience. I mean, you have a national treasure of an actor and you just waste him. Why? Makes no sense.
And it’s not just the script that is out of sorts—it’s also Russell’s direction. He clearly doesn’t have a clue what he wants this movie to be. Most of the performances lack direction and as a result come off flat. In fact, it’s worse than flat. It feels like Russell wasn’t even on set. It’s just a bunch of actors saying lines for the entire runtime. Seriously, that’s how sloppy the direction feels.
Also, for a comedy/thriller, this movie was starved of any laughs, or thrills. My audience never laughed at any joke the film presented us with, nor did we feel any tension or thrills when anything that was supposed to be thrilling popped up on screen.
The movie’s pace also just doesn’t work. This feels like a three-hour movie, when the runtime is really just two hours and fifteen minutes, which is ridiculous. This is due to the numerous nonsensical time skips that could have been cut out of the movie, which would have made everything make a lot more sense anyway.
Amsterdam is a major step down from Russell’s previous films, and it was one of the most disappointing movie experiences I’ve had in a long time.