Amsterdam is one of those movies that reminds you how hard it is to make a good movie. You can have a strong idea, a talented cast, and a director with an impressive track record and still wind up with something that trips all over itself on the screen and lands in theaters with a thud. Writer-director David O. Russell (American Hustle, Three Kings, Flirting with Disaster) rounds up the likes of Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Rami Malek, Anya Taylor-Joy, Zoe Saldana, Chris Rock, Michael Shannon, Mike Myers, and Robert De Niro for a screwball mystery/political thriller set in the 1930s. It’s based on an actual conspiracy to circumvent the democratic process in the United States, so the movie has topicality in its favor too. But everything here is out of sync: the dizzying plot, involving the murder of a World War I general; the characters, especially the triad of Bale, Robbie, and Washington, who keep telling us what fast friends they are but rarely get a chance to show it; even the performances from the usually reliable ensemble. (What laughs the actors get frequently stand apart from any of the “comedy” that’s being staged.) It’s like a Wes Anderson movie without the clockwork precision and sure command of tone. At some point in post-production, Russell and editor Jay Cassidy must have realized that what appeared to be working on the page and on the set was nearly nonsensical on the screen, because the movie delivers an exasperating explanatory finale that repeatedly tells us what we already understand, via voice-over, while still managing to leave us confused. I will say this: Bale’s character is an injured World War I vet with a glass eye, which seems to have prompted legendary cinematographer Emanuel Lubezki (The Tree of Life) to light every actor’s eyes with a resplendent glow. If you do see Amsterdam, don’t worry about what the likes of Robbie and Malek are saying and simply get lost in the pools of color emanating at you as they gaze down from the screen. You’re going to be lost in Amsterdam anyway; you might as well be lost in a little bit of bliss.
(10/10/2022)
