Amsterdam

The latest muddled, star-studded, kinda-sorta-based-on-a-true-story picture from David O. Russell is the first such offering from the filmmaker to fall completely flat. Russell’s cinematic oeuvre is uneven but, love him or hate him, his movies to date have always, if nothing else, provided an opportunity to see actors you love take bold chances with highly entertaining results. This would seem to be the case again with Amsterdam. The film, set in post-WWI, opens with narrator Burt Berendsen setting the stage. Berendsen, played to comedic hilt by Russell regular Christian Bale, is a Harlem-based plastic surgeon and pain doctor who lost an eye in The Great War, and treats other wounded and disfigured veterans. He shares office space with his best war bud, a lawyer and fellow injured vet named Harold Woodman (John David Washington). These two fictional characters soon become bit players in a reality-based conspiracy, led by a group of high-powered businessmen trying to capitalize on the anger of disenfranchised vets to replace president Franklin Roosevelt with a seemingly benevolent populist dictator who will do the bidding of these wealthy puppet masters. It’s a cool, timely story into which Russell weaves a near-farcical comedic adventure, where Woodman and Berendsen reunite with an artist named Valerie (Margot Robbie), a military nurse who cared for and befriended them when they were wounded in Europe. With flashbacks to the trio's time in France and the titular Amsterdam, copious voice-over narration, and an unfolding mystery in which the two heroes are wanted for murder, Russell’s narrative becomes less and less cohesive and engaging. The climax it builds to should exciting, but you're so worn out by the time it arrives that everything ends with a thud.