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