Review: Amsterdam

Set in the 1930s, three friends (Christian Bale – doctor, John David Washington – a lawyer, Margot Robbie – a nurse) witness a murder and get themselves caught up in a conspiracy to overthrow the American President. Andrea Riseborough plays Bale’s partner, Rami Malek and Anya Taylor-Joy play Robbie’s kooky brother and his wife, whilst we also get turns by Zoe Saldana, Taylor Swift, Robert De Niro, and the oil-and-water pairing of Michael Shannon and Mike Myers as a couple of spies, among several others.

 

A big-name cast is assembled by writer/director/bully David O. Russell (“Three Kings”, “The Silver Linings Playbook”, “American Hustle”, “Joy”) for this 2022 flop. And they’re wasted, in what amounts to an empty, messy, shaggy dog mystery-comedy. It seems like Russell watched a lot of Coen Brothers movies and mistakenly thought he could make one himself. The film has some appealing moments, but it takes about 80 minutes for it to even finally be about something. By then I’d long lost interest. It’s pretty easy to see why critics didn’t take to it.

 

The script and tone are a mess, and most of the cast feel like guest stars, with only Margot Robbie and Christian Bale really standing out. Even the way actors like Anya Taylor-Joy and Rami Malek are framed in their entrances has a bit of a heavy-handed “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” guest star vibe to it. Bale is seemingly doing an Al Pacino performance and I’m all for it, even if there doesn’t seem to be much purpose behind it. It’s a fun performance in a film without much fun. Robbie looks radiant and gives the film a boost of energy whenever she turns up which isn’t quite often enough for me. On the other hand, John David Washington may adopt shades of his dad’s voice and cadence at times, but boy are his line readings flat here. Anya Taylor-Joy is similarly stilted and mannered, and while the same may be true of Rami Malek for once I felt his affected style fit in here at least.

 

A few appealing elements and performances are no compensation for an unfocussed, rambling, and unsatisfying film. The talent involved here surely demands a better product, several of them seem to have come in from completely different films. This…is not good. I have to imagine there’s a story behind why this thing has ended up the way it has.

 

Rating: C

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