HUSTLERS REVIEW
Starring: Constance Wu, Jennifer Lopez, Julia Stiles, Lili Reinhart
Directed By: Lorene Scafaria (Seeking a Friend for the End of the World)
Rated: R
Runtime: 1 hour 50 minutes
So how was Hustlers?Well, you know.Truth be told.It was pretty solid.Hustlers tells the story of Destiny, played by Constance Wu.Who begins working at a strip club in New York City in the early 2000s.She struggles to break though in the cutthroat stripper industry.Umm…that’s not as ridiculous a sentence in the movie as it appears.Destiny befriends veteran stripper Ramona, played by Jennifer Lopez.Ramona is a star.Jennifer Lopez makes an all-time great movie entrance.No hyperbole.It’s gotta be top ten.
The two dancers team up to become rock stars at this particular strip club.Then the Wall Street crash happens.The financiers don’t have expendable cash, so the dance community suffers.Destiny and Ramona have to think outside the box on how to make money for themselves and their families.
They devise an intricate plot that I won’t detail here on the radio, but it works.Like gangbusters!The two earn money hand over fist.Only one problem, it’s illegal.The dancers ignore the laws because these are greedy thieving Wall Street guys, their feelings don’t matter.Well, needless to say it all spirals out of control and blows up in their face.
The framing device for this movie is a magazine interview.Julia Stiles plays a reporter talking to Destiny and Ramona separately to gather information for a soon to be released article on the duo.Which creates an interesting device to tell the story.
Jennifer Lopez OWNS the screen.I cannot immediately recall a movie star owning a screen like this.Your eye is drawn to her, and she dominates this movie.I think it might be because every other actress is nothing special.I actually loathe Constance Wu, I find her to be arrogant and not as good an actor as she thinks she is.But I digress.This movie is 100 percent Lopez’s.It’s probably the best role of her 25 year career and that’s because in a lot of ways this seems like a version of Jennifer Lopez’s true self just turned up to 11.She plays a mother-like figure for these other dancers and she’s a fierce protector of them.
A great supporting cast doesn’t get enough chance to shine.Pop stars Lizzo and Cardi B appear in the first act.They’re terrific.Cardi B defies logic.She should be super annoying, but for some reason I find her unbelievably charming.Lizzo owns her plus size figure as always.Lili Reinhart is one of the stars of the hit TV Riverdale, or so I’m told.She plays a stripper in the crew hustling rich men out of money to great effect.
People are talking Oscar for Jennifer Lopez.I say pump the brakes on that.She’s good.Real good.I didn’t know she had it in her.But I don’t think she’s THAT good in this movie.She may earn that token fifth Oscar nomination in the Supporting Actress category.I wouldn’t give her much of a chance at all to win.Although, with the Oscars caring more about ratings than awarding the best in cinema, who really knows.
The movie is a little long winded, overly detailed in the first two acts.Almost as if there was a three hour version of this movie out there.It ends up being nearly two hours long, and the ending feels a little rushed.Like the makers of the movie looked at the clock and said “oh my goodness we’ve only got twenty minutes left, we need to wrap this up”.You keep waiting for this scheme to blow up in their face and it takes a really long time to get there.When the movie was over I wanted to know a little more about the conflict than the friendship.One side was laid out better than the other.
I liked this movie more than I thought I would.I wasn’t really going to see it, and ended up enjoying it.My expectations were fairly low.But I dug this.It’s sexy, cool, and an interesting story.Men will enjoy the visuals, women will enjoy the characters.There’s something here for everyone to be honest.It’s not one of the best movies of the year, but all in all pretty decent.
On a scale of “See It/Stream It/Skip It” – Stream It – a good date movie.Enough good here to recommend.Not as overly sexual as you might think.
If you liked Goodfellas, Set it Off, or 9 to 5 you might enjoy Hustlers.What a wide array of movies to compare this to.
3 out of 5 stars for Hustlers.A sexy crime saga with substance.