AMSTERDAM

 

Well! It has certainly been a hot minute since I’ve written one of these, hasn’t it?

 

Well, now that I’m starting to get into a routine with my new job and other artistic pursuits, I’ve decided to return to my hobby of reviewing movies mostly because it’s something I’ve enjoyed doing for the past six years.

 

And we’re gonna get back into the swing of things with Amsterdam…which, unfortunately, was not very good. 

 

Set in 1930s New York, the newest film from director David O. Russell (late of The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook) tells the story of Dr. Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale), lawyer Harold Woodman (John David Washington), and former war nurse Valerie (Margot Robbie), all of whom met in France during WWI and lived together in Amsterdam for a time. Now, Burt and Harold are caught up in the death of their old Commander and his daughter’s subsequent murder. They enlist the help of Valerie – who’s now a recluse living with her brother (Rami Malek) and his gaslighting wife (Anya Taylor-Joy) and apparently suffering from a nerve disorder – to clear their names and get caught up in a Byzantine conspiracy by a group known as the Order of the Five to oust President Roosevelt and install a fascist dictator.

 

Much like Russell’s 2013 film American Hustle, this is a fictionalized telling of a real event known as the Business Plot, wherein a secret organization did in fact try to install a fascist dictator in the White House…and also much like Hustle, this film is a rambling mess, much more invested in quirky moments and characters talking around the plot than just getting to the damn point already. Seriously, scene after scene, we have the characters standing or sitting around, conversing and talking over each other, mostly about things that barely relate to the story at hand, which is fine for a little bit of texture, but gets incredibly annoying when it distracts from the plot this much. And by the time the film did get to the plot, I was almost completely checked out.

 

And it’s a shame, because everybody in front of and behind the camera is doing a good job. The chemistry between Bale, Washington, and Robbie is amazing, the rest of the cast – including veterans like Robert de Niro and Mike Meyers, along with reliable character players like Timothy Olyphant, Michael Shannon, and Chris Rock – have some hilarious moments, Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography is wonderful as usual, and Daniel Pemberton’s score is incredibly relaxing, almost reminding me of Alexandre Desplat’s music from The Grand Budapest Hotel. So, all the individual pieces are good, but they don’t come together successfully because the script and pacing are all just out of whack. Case in point: right around the time the plot gets going, the film stops dead in its tracks to show us an extended flashback sequence that shows us all how the three protagonists met. It’s charming and probably the best part of the movie, but why did they decide to put it in there when they could have started the movie off with it?

 

So, yeah. Seems like Russell’s return to cinema after a seven-year hiatus wasn’t worth the wait. I’d say check it out on DVD if you wish to see it.