The Wheel of Destiny has spoken once again! This time, for better or worse, it’s taken us to Amsterdam. While it boasts an incredible cast and more or less looks the part of the epic adventure caper it clearly believes itself to be, it’s cluttered by things you’d likely perceive to be its biggest strengths and struggles to reconcile the sentiment it’s aiming for.
In the wake of World War I, three friends get caught up in a murder plot, are framed for it, and are forced to uncover the truth and stop some powerful entities from getting their agenda rolling in America.
David O. Russell’s latest film was pretty much DOA when it hit the box office thanks primarily to public outcry about the seemingly endless list of allegations, that cover the full spectrum of psychotic and abusive behavior, pointing in his direction. This, however, isn’t an article about Russell’s behaviors. I am no expert on the subject matter and I hadn’t even read the details before sitting down to watch the movie, but the whispers alone were enough to make me hesitant. If you want to familiarize yourself, this Vulture article by Jennifer Zhan does a better job of laying it out than I could ever hope to. On to the movie stuff.
When my girlfriend and I went to see this in theaters, we ended up getting there a tad late and missed the first few minutes. That started me off on the wrong foot as I played catch-up, but that was also user error on my part. In the name of due diligence, before sitting down to write this, I went back to see what I had missed and wound up watching the whole thing again. That wasn’t the plan, but my back was hurting and I just wasn’t ready to get off the couch. That said, the second watch gave me the context I had been looking for but ultimately only served to reinforce my initial impressions more emphatically.
Christian Bale was the main reason I wanted to see this movie. For my girlfriend, that reason was Taylor Swift. Oddly enough, that dichotomy alone is a good microcosm of one of the film’s biggest issues permeating its 2h 14m runtime.
Bale was, more or less, exactly what I expected. It is always nice to see him flex his comedic chops, even a little, and that’s where he’s strongest here, but the character design oscillates aimlessly between the sympathetic wounded soldier whose marriage is falling apart and the quirky drug-dealing doctor who invents his own painkillers and winds up in the middle of some outlandish conspiracy. He does what he can to reconcile that tonal imbalance but the character writing doesn’t do enough to push the audience one way or another with any real conviction. We are introduced to him as the zany doctor who passes out with his pants around his ankles while testing out experimental meds in his office/clinic, and even when we are shown the extent of his war injuries it’s a party in the hospital. There’s no way to take it even remotely seriously, but the humor is not nearly funny enough to be a comedy. His performance was great and still one of the year’s best, but this is a case where the rest of the film dragged it down.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have Taylor Swift. There is no need for her to be in this movie at all. Her role could have been played by anybody and I don’t mean that to be disrespectful. I don’t blame her for taking the role nor is she the problem, but the character is completely dry and wooden, and seemingly only there to be filled by someone who has a name and then disposed of. The cast is indeed exceptional but, in this case, it ended up being more of a detriment than a benefit.
This is a case where there are just too many mouths to feed and not nearly enough to go around. But the A-list nature of the cast dictated Russell trying to milk it. Let us just look at the female characters first. You get the considerable skill that comes along with Margot Robbie, Andrea Riseborough, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Zoe Saldana, but the best they get is partially realized characters that are there more in the service of the men and their stories. Margot Robbie at least gets to have a backstory about why she’s crazy but Riseborough is just a meaner-than-usual cliched nagging wife, Taylor-Joy is reduced to an equally irksome spouse, and Zoe Saldana is relegated to a love interest that mainly exists to help generate sympathy for the lead and kinda doesn’t matter. This film had some serious female firepower and Russell displayed a very limited scope by being unable to give them something that was worthy of their talent.
The overloaded cast caused a different set of issues with the guys but at least Russell gave them their own motivations which, again, points to the lack of care he gave his female characters. A small bright spot is that Bale is such a dominant screen presence and definitely the strongest aspect of this film. He never lets you forget whose movie it is when sharing the screen with Robert De Niro, Chris Rock, Rami Malek, Michael Shannon, Mike Myers, John David Washington, Timothy Olyphant, Alessandro Nivola, and Matthias Schoenaerts. For what it’s worth, they were all good. However, all those names needed reasons to be on the screen and a lot of that detracts from the areas of the film that actually could have used the help. This was a case where less would have probably been more. The resulting extra time could have been better spent leaning into the characters played by Shannon and Myers. One clear takeaway for me is that I want a spinoff with just those two because they clearly understood the assignment and tone of the film, and boiling it down to just them and Bale could have worked out really well.
Regardless of how moviegoers and critics responded to this film, all that A-list talent is going to be just fine. However, the negative reactions are a bigger detriment to those whose work may not get recognized as a result. For example, earlier in this piece I stated that the film certainly looks the part and that’s because Judy Becker’s production design was one of the best aspects of the film. Whether or not it was truly period authentic is neither here nor there for me because it worked. The costumes by J.R. Hawbaker and Albert Wolksy were on point as well and gave the characters their own sense of flair. The makeup department did an excellent job with the war wounds but that too sort of got buried. Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki (Children of Men, The Revenant) is one of the best in the business as well and he captured the visual strengths of the film with exceptional skill, particularly with his close-ups and the framing of interior shots. Ultimately, had this not been Russell, it may have been easier to separate its strengths and weaknesses more equitably but this is an instance where everything seems to have gone down with the ship.
In a vacuum, I don’t know that I would go as far as to say Amsterdam is a “bad” movie. Its biggest problem isn’t necessarily the movie it wound up as, it’s more so the substantial gap between what it is and what it could have been and why it didn’t reach that potential. That all points back to the director at the helm. In watching it a second time, it simply didn’t command my attention and came across as more trivial than anything else. That’s part of the reason why it took a catastrophic loss (about $50-mil) at the box office. I’ll be curious to see if anyone really wants to fund a David O. Russell project after this.
Recommendation: If you’re going to see it, do so for Christian Bale’s performance, the limited glimpses of genuine humor provided by Michael Shannon and Mike Myers, and for a great example of understanding how and why a film isn’t just the sum of its parts.
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