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David O. Russell's star-studded 'Amsterdam' is a Prohibition-era farce

Left to right: Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, and John David Washington "Amsterdam." (Courtesy 20th Century Studios)
Left to right: Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, and John David Washington "Amsterdam." (Courtesy 20th Century Studios)

A curious thing happened to me while watching writer-director David O. Russell’s “Amsterdam.” For the first 20 minutes or so, I couldn’t abide Christian Bale’s performance, another of the actor’s over-the-top collections of tics and mannered mannerisms, with (literally) eye-popping, cartoonish reaction shots and gruff inflections borrowed equally from Al Pacino and Peter Falk. Bale’s playing a disfigured WWI vet who runs a street clinic dispensing experimental pain medications to his fellow wounded soldiers, and spends most of the movie hopped up on his own wares with his glass eye falling out at inopportune moments. It’s one of the most obnoxious performances I’ve ever seen, sucking all the oxygen out of the room and driving this critic to distraction, until something clicked somewhere during the second reel and I suddenly started to find him incredibly, unaccountably hilarious. Even charming. By the end of these 134 minutes I’d decided it might be one of my favorite things Bale has ever done.

“Amsterdam” is a seriously strange movie. A top-heavy, Prohibition-era farce that lumbers down a very long runway without ever taking flight, it’s a reckless and sometimes quite silly film in the forgotten tradition of big-budget bombs like Stanley Donen’s “Lucky Lady” or those mid-career Peter Bogdanovich flops that strained to emulate the effervescence of 1930s screwball comedies. (When I was a kid watching HBO in the ‘80s, I assumed any movie made for adults had to have a flapper in it.) Nothing about “Amsterdam” works, per se. The all-star cast acts like they’re all in different pictures and the plot threads don’t so much intertwine as collapse into chaos. And yet, there’s a loopy, eager energy to the picture that inspires a peculiar affection. It’s a blundering mess of a movie, but an endearing one.

Left to right: Anya Taylor-Joy as Libby, Rami Malek as Tom, Christian Bale as Burt, Robert De Niro as Gil, and Margot Robbie as Valerie
Left to right: Anya Taylor-Joy as Libby, Rami Malek as Tom, Christian Bale as Burt, Robert De Niro as Gil and Margot Robbie as Valerie "Amsterdam." (Courtesy Merie Weismiller Wallace)

It begins with Bale’s disgraced Dr. Burt Berendsen and his old army buddy Harold Woodman, Esq. (a superbly suave John David Washington) being hired to investigate the mysterious death of their former commanding officer. But before we can even get the backstory out of the way, Burt and Harold are framed for the murder of their client and so begins a confounding, madcap excursion into New York’s corrupt high society, occasionally interrupted by flashbacks to happier days in the Dutch capital from which the film takes its title, where our heroes once frolicked and sang nonsense songs with a free-spirited nurse named Valerie (Margot Robbie) in a misty, postwar paradise. Obviously inspired by Francois Truffaut’s “Jules and Jim,” these scenes have a lovely, lyrical quality that goes a long way toward establishing the aura of woozy romanticism Russell seems to be shooting for.

Meanwhile Woodman and Berendsen – their names a weird riff on the Washington Post reporters – accidentally stumble their way into a scheme by wealthy American industrialists to overthrow democracy and replace FDR with a business-friendly general played by Robert De Niro. History buffs have probably already noticed how much this sounds like the attempted “Wall Street Putsch” of 1933, with the names changed to protect the guilty. (Cough, Prescott Bush.) But Russell and company are really making a movie about the Jan. 6 riot, and how often throughout history the wealthy have encouraged the United States to flirt with fascism. If such a stark warning sounds tonally at odds with the movie’s goofy comedy, it sure is. But at least it allows De Niro to indulge his favorite hobby: giving a (thinly veiled) speech telling off Trump.

Besides, everything in “Amsterdam” is at odds with it itself in some way or another. The cast is so massive I’m assuming the movie’s IMAX engagements were required just to fit them all on screen, but the performers all vibrate on different wavelengths that rarely manage to meet. Zoe Saldaña is apparently assuming she’s in a serious social issues drama even while Bale performs pratfalls landing in her lap. Robbie and Washington make an absurdly charismatic pair, suggesting a much sexier movie may have ended up on the cutting room floor. After all these years, Chris Rock still hasn’t figured out how to be comfortable on camera, shouting anachronistic commentary from the sidelines. Faring better is a very funny Alessandro Nivola as the stupidest cop in a movie already full of idiots. The way he enunciates the word “strength” had me gasping for air.

Left to right: Michael Shannon as Henry Norcross, Mike Myers as Paul Canterbury, Christian Bale as Burt Berendsen, Chris Rock as Milton King, and Robert De Niro as General Gil Dillenbeck in
Left to right: Michael Shannon as Henry Norcross, Mike Myers as Paul Canterbury, Christian Bale as Burt Berendsen, Chris Rock as Milton King and Robert De Niro as General Gil Dillenbeck in "Amsterdam." (Courtesy Merie Weismiller Wallace)

The most delightful surprises are Rami Malek and Anya Taylor-Joy as a pair of kooky philanthropists, with Malek’s performance in particular edited to emphasize the breathy pauses in his line readings and the actor’s blank, unnerving stare. Taylor-Joy is a scream as a society bride sexually obsessed with De Niro, shuddering orgasmically in his presence. (It’s really no surprise why the veteran star agreed to play this part.) But my favorites were the uncharacteristically restrained Michael Shannon and Mike Myers as a couple of smiling, suspiciously friendly spies who would rather be birdwatching, underplaying in a movie full of over-actors to droll comic effect. There’s also a quick but creditable turn from Taylor Swift, whose abrupt exit from the film I’m predicting will become a GIF everyone’s sick of seeing in a month or two.

Director Russell’s star has fallen significantly since the early, anarchic provocations of his “Spanking the Monkey,” “Flirting with Disaster” and “Three Kings.” Bad behavior and the box office disaster of his brilliant, transcendentalist slapstick comedy “I Heart Huckabees” put his career on ice for years, until Russell was able to reinvent himself shepherding all-star casts to Oscar glory in faux-edgy, commercial crowd pleasers like “The Fighter,” “Silver Linings Playbook” and “American Hustle.” “Amsterdam” feels like the filmmaker’s attempt to marry his prestige picture phase with the overt politics and atonal, exploratory weirdness of his earlier work. It doesn’t come together at all, particularly during the film’s seven or eight endings that keep restating the obvious. But one doesn’t often see a  studio movie made on this budget level given to such flights of foolhardy abandon. “Amsterdam” is like one of those nonsense songs sung during the film with brio by Bale, Robbie and Washington. The gibberish has a certain charm.


"Amsterdam" opens in theaters Friday, Oct. 7.

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Sean Burns Film Critic
Sean Burns is a film critic for The ARTery.

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