American Hustle

American Hustle is loosely based on the 1970's Abscam scandal, where the FBI used a professional con artist to entrap a number of politicians who took bribes to grease the skids for casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey.  Here, when an FBI agent [Bradley Cooper] catches cons [Christian Bale] and [Amy Adams], he promises their freedom if they can trap four other cons.  The operation, which starts by targeting the Camden mayor [Jeremy Renner], eventually grows as the FBI believes they can catch bigger fish, and as politicians and mobsters come into the net, eventually they all get in over their heads.  The whole thing is also threatened by [Bale's] unstable wife [Jennifer Lawrence].  Can they get out of this tangled web alive?

This movie was hyped and well-received, and I was really looking forward to it, expecting a sort of Ocean's Eleven "cons within cons"-type arrangement.  That was partly there, but (unlike Ocean's) the movie largely lacked an undercurrent of fun- it was intensely disturbing at times.  Every main character was mentally unstable in their own way, and some scenes were hard to watch.  One of the main themes- everybody cons to survive- certainly comes through, and was an interesting point (in fact, throughout most of the movie you're not sure who's conning whom).  The acting was superb, and there's a lot of interesting stuff here . . . but the disturbing element put me off a bit, as did the fact that the real story was much different and just as (or perhaps more) interesting, so deviating from it seemed unnecessary.

Rating: B-