If you were alive in the late 70s and early 80s, you might remember the ABSCAM scandal. It was an FBI sting operation targeting public corruption which led to the conviction of several senators and congressmen. American Hustle is a mostly fictitious story about how ABSCAM came about.
Christian Bale and Amy Adams play Irving Rosenfeld and Sydney Prosser, successful con artists who are busted by an FBI agent named Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper). Richie offers them a deal: they can avoid jail time if they help him bust some city officials for corruption. They cook up a scheme to get the mayor and other officials to accept bribes in order to get a casino built in New Jersey.
This movie is a lot of fun. We quickly realize that Richie is getting in over his head. His boss at the FBI (played by Louis CK) keeps saying no to all his requests for more money. The operation gets expensive because he needs to convince these officials that a rich Middle Eastern sheikh wants to invest in the casino. The levels of corruption get higher and higher, and then when the mob gets involved they all realize their lives are now in danger if they're discovered.
Jennifer Lawrence plays Irving's wife, and she steals the movie. She's this obnoxious blonde bimbo who may be much smarter than she seems. The mayor (Jeremy Renner) is taking bribes and involved in corruption, but he's doing it in order to provide jobs for the people of Camden, New Jersey. He and Irving form a friendship that you know is going to end badly, because eventually he's going to find out that this is an FBI sting operation.
All of the performances are good in this movie. Christian Bale put on weight and has a really bad combover, and he does a really good New Jersey dialect. The movie gets a little crazy an hour or so in, and it's a little too long. It runs about two hours and twenty minutes. It also gets hard to follow all the details of the operation, but that doesn't detract from the fun of watching these characters try to keep everything together. Highly recommended.
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