Amsterdam

There are many who will say that Amsterdam is a bad movie, but I'm here to set the record straight.  The latest from writer-director David O. Russell (Silver Linings Playbook) is much too ambitious to be awful, and therefore, it must be labeled as a disappointment.  There's a big-name cast and a clear effort being made here, but it's all at the expense of a muddled story that is too complicated to be fun, and nowhere near the effort to figure out.

Here is a movie that manages to be too much and not enough at the same time.  It's overstuffed with plot and character, yet meanders and crawls its way through its own labyrinth that it creates for itself, until the audience either succumbs to its weak charms, or simply drops off and stop paying attention.  Here is a movie with a cast that most directors would kill to work with.  Put Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Chris Rock, Robert De Niro, Zoe Saldana, Taylor Swift and Anya Taylor-Joy up on the screen, and you're sure to draw attention, and it does for a while.  The problem is Russell has given us all these great actors, and never got around to giving them interesting characters, or putting them in a plot worth giving a damn about.

Maybe all this star-power is supposed to distract us from how poorly put together the film itself is.  It's been a while since I found myself asking myself, "Just what is this movie trying to say, and where is it going"?  Sometimes that can be a fun experience if you're watching something truly amateur and wondering what the filmmakers thought they were doing when they made it.  But, I'm afraid Amsterdam was made with the best of intentions, and the movie is worse for that.  It doesn't have the decency to be a misguided mess that we can laugh at.  It's been shot expertly, and again, the performers all demand our attention, darn it.  Some movies that misfire are fun to watch, but this one ends up being a chore, because you can see actual effort went into making something worthwhile, and it never quite came together.

If you should attempt to decipher the plot at play, here it is to the best of my knowledge.  Bale and Washington play best friends who find themselves suspects in a murder.  Looking for answers, the friends unravel something much bigger, which brings about a number of extended flashbacks that time jump the plot to different eras in early 20th Century America.  The whole thing is focused on fascist ideas that were gaining power at the time, and I guess we're supposed to be shocked at how similar they are to a lot of today's politics.  In case we don't pick up on this, he stops the movie and has the characters explain everything to us in droning dialogue.

Amsterdam tries to mix its murder mystery and political anger themes with zany comedy.  You've got Bale going to great lengths to make us laugh by taking numerous falls, and by giving his character a glass eye that is always falling out and causing him trouble.  His best friend (Washington) has been by his side since serving in the War, and we get extended flashbacks about how they met.  There are some nice moments during the flashbacks when they meet a girl (Robbie) who sets their spirits free and teaches them how to live.  But then, it's back to the wackiness, such as throwing in Michael Shannon and Mike Myers as a pair of goofy spies.  This is a movie that can't decide if it wants to be a comic lark or a heavy-handed message movie that spells out its thoughts instead of trusting its audience.  

Because of that lack of balance, the movie becomes a failure, but one too ambitious to be labeled as truly awful.  You can admire certain elements, such as the sets, costumes, and maybe some performances.  But, on the whole, the thing collapses in on itself, and leaves no impression on the viewer, other than they spent too much time watching it, and didn't get enough in return.

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