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The Persuasive Potency of “Decision to Leave”

You’re a cop, on a rooftop, facing a guy with a knife. You have no weapon, so what to do? You reach into your pocket and pluck out a glove, made of fine chain mail, as was once used to cowl the heads and necks of medieval knights. Pulling on the glove, you grab—without fear of injury—the blade that your enemy thrusts at you, make a fist of your free hand, and punch his lights out. A nice move, and just one of the practical lessons to be drawn from “Decision to Leave,” the latest film from Park Chan-wook . Other tips: when interviewing a suspect at a police station, order in two boxes of premium sushi to feed the friendly mood. Also, as one of the characters says, “Killing is like smoking. Only the first time is hard.” Sensible advice, though I need to know how easy it is to quit killing. Do you wear a patch? Or chew anti-homicidal gum?

The begloved cop is Hae-joon (Park Hae-il), who, during the week, lives in the Korean city of Busan. On weekends, he goes home to his wife, Jeong-Ahn (Lee Jung-hyun), who works at a nuclear power plant in another town. Hae-joon is bright, polite, punctilious, fit (outpacing his young deputy during a chase on foot), skilled at cooking, and, you might think, difficult to fool. If only he could sleep. One day, Hae-joon is called to inspect a dead body, at the foot of a towering rock, and we are treated to a demonstration of the visual wit—frequently grand, yet etched with a cunning forensic precision—in which Park and his director of photography, Kim Ji-yong, like to deal. From a distance, we spot two tiny figures being hauled to the top of the rock, on an electric pulley; in closeup, we see the cracked face of a Rolex, its hands now motionless, and ants slaving over an eyeball. Something about this case is starting to crawl.

The widow of the fallen man, who was an experienced climber, is Seo-rae (Tang Wei), and she is far from prostrate with grief. “I worry when he does not come back from a mountain, thinking he might die at last.” At last? Is she relieved  ? To be fair, we shouldn’t read too much into her phrasing, because, as she says, “I’m Chinese, my Korean is insufficient.” Like Park’s previous film, “The Handmaiden” (2016), “Decision to Leave” is rich in linguistic slippage. At one point, on a snowy night, Seo-rae speaks Chinese into her phone, which, in turn, thanks to the dangerous miracle of Google Translate, talks in Korean to Hae-joon. He is standing in front of her, adrift in the blizzard of words.

Gadgetry is everywhere in the new film (how lonely Hae-joon looks, dictating his thoughts into the phone on his wrist), yet it’s only one cog in the ticking machinery of Park’s plot. The whole thing is engineered, we realize, to tell a tale of obsessive love. Thus, as Hae-joon, sitting in his car with binoculars, observes Seo-rae at work—she is a caregiver, who believes that “living old people come before dead husbands”—he magically appears in the room beside her, like Kirk beaming up next to Mr. Spock. The imagery answers to Hae-joon’s desire, granting him a proximity to Seo-rae that life, even the life of a prying detective, cannot supply. All the while, of course, he is supposed to be establishing whether or not she pushed her husband off that rock. The quest grows more urgent in the movie’s second half, as Hae-joon, “completely shattered,” gives up the job in Busan and goes home. You really think the case is closed? Open wide.

One way to size up this singular film is to enumerate all that it lacks. Of the nastiness that spattered Park’s early works there is no sign; any violence here is brisk and fleeting. As for the glistening carnality of “The Handmaiden,” forget it; Hae-joon does have sex with his wife, on the red-hot principle that, as she says, “new research suggests it’s good for cognitive ability,” but his rapport with Seo-rae is hilariously chaste. See her fumble through his raincoat and find a tube of lip gloss! Wait two hours for a kiss! Fans of Tang Wei, who recall what she brought to the erotic candor of Ang Lee’s “ Lust, Caution ” (2007), will note the demureness with which, as Seo-rae, she raises her skirt to display a mark on her thigh. Compare Lauren Bacall, in “The Big Sleep” (1946), scratching the itch on her knee.

Despite such restraint, or because of it, “Decision to Leave” bears the persuasive potency of true romance. It should be called “Love, Recklessness.” Having been twisted into bewildered bits by the convolutions of Park’s narrative, I was astonished, toward the end, to find it brushing against the tragic. The entire movie has swarmed, often farcically, with aquatic details; poor Hae-joon even had his finger bitten by a turtle. Now, however, he staggers alone along a beach. The sun, on the horizon, is ready to call it a day. Amid the crash of breakers, you can just about hear him crying out for Seo-rae. Whether she turns up, and what waves of crime have or have not swept her to this shore, I leave you to discover.

In another life, the director of “Silver Linings Playbook” (2012), David O. Russell , would have made disaster flicks in the nineteen-seventies. The purpose of that noble genre was to stuff as many stars as possible, exquisitely mismatched, into a confined space; on board the deadly-virus-bearing train in “The Cassandra Crossing” (1976), for example, were Sophia Loren, Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, Richard Harris, and Martin Sheen, plus an unusual pairing of Ingrid Thulin, so often the purveyor of agony for Ingmar Bergman, and O. J. Simpson. Too much? Not by the standard of “Amsterdam,” Russell’s new film, which features Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Zoe Saldaña, Chris Rock, Mike Myers, Michael Shannon, Anya Taylor-Joy, Rami Malek, Robert De Niro, and—hold the phone—Taylor Swift. If ever a cast cried out for a bug on a train, or a skyscraper on fire, it’s this one.

Bale plays Burt Berendsen, who is badly hurt in the First World War, as is his pal, Harold Woodman (Washington). In Belgium, their wounds are tended by a nurse named Valerie (Robbie); her surname shifts as we go along, and is best kept under wraps. Initially in hospital and then, once the conflict is over, in the gilded leisure of Amsterdam, the three of them form an unbreakable pact of friendship. Before long, needless to say, it is broken. Burt, sporting a glass eye, returns to New York, to the icy disdain of his wife, Beatrice (Andrea Riseborough), and to his career as a doctor, much of it spent relieving the pain of other ex-combatants. Harold, too, finds himself in the city, practicing as an attorney. But where, pray, did Valerie go? And what will connoisseurs of early-twentieth-century romantic threesomes learn from “Amsterdam” that they don’t already get from “Jules et Jim” (1962)?

Russell’s plot quickens, thickens, and stalls. Burt, at the autopsy of his old military commander, meets a fellow-medic, Irma (Saldaña), who views the death as suspicious. The trail leads to a mansion, home to the flighty but fearsome Libby Voze (Taylor-Joy) and her husband, Tom (Malek), who seems to be as pliably soft as his sweater. Appearances, though, are calculated to deceive, and Burt and Harold soon happen upon a hideous—yet unmistakably daft—conspiracy to inject Fascism into the American bloodstream. The fate of such an evil scheme depends on a speech, to be delivered to veterans by a retired general (De Niro). The latter stages of the film are chewed up, interminably, by the prelude to this major event.

“Amsterdam” is, or is meant to be, a caper: an easygoing endeavor, you might think. But capering is as tricky on the silver screen as it is on the dance floor, and the tone of the tale keeps losing its footing. To and fro we trip across the years. A couple of ornithologists-cum-spies (Shannon and Myers) pop up in postwar Europe, and again, in the mid-nineteen-thirties, in the U.S.A. The screams of bloody soldiers, on stretchers, are overlaid by a merry musical score. Burt describes his duties as “fixing faces, raising spirits, singing songs,” and the strain of that mingling tells on Bale, whose performance is unhappily redolent of late-period Al Pacino, complete with hiccupping speech patterns and loony stares. What we see in Bale is a tremendously serious actor proffering a considered essay in comedy—which is not, alas, the same as being a funny guy.

Only in its milder moments, when Russell is not trying too hard to be madcap, or to badger us with dark political portents, does “Amsterdam” stir and convince. An early conversation at the hospital, between Harold and Valerie, isn’t exactly a heart-to-heart, yet we do feel, by the end of it, that we have witnessed two people falling—calmly, not crazily—in love. She shows him scraps of art that she has made, from spent bullets; her later efforts include collages, photographs, wire sculptures, and X-rays, many of them created for the movie by the British artist Linder Sterling, and riffing beautifully, I’d say, on the work of Meret Oppenheim and Man Ray. In short, you should go to Russell’s film, but not for fun. Go for the art. ♦

An earlier version of this article misidentified the character who is married to Hae-joon and the actress who plays her.

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‘Amsterdam’ Is a Throwback, a Warning — and a Beautiful, All-Star Mess

By David Fear

Name an actor — almost any working actor you can think of — and there is a fairly good chance they are in David O. Russell ‘s Amsterdam. Christian Bale , the intense thespian who’s done his best work with the equally all-or-nothing-at-all auteur? No surprise that he’s front and center here. Ditto Russell rep-company regular Robert De Niro . Rising star John David Washington ? Yup, him too. Margot Robbie and Anya Taylor-Joy , both current candidates for “It girl” status circa 2022? Present and accounted for. How about Chris Rock , or Rami Malek , or Zoe Saldana, Michael Shannon , Mike Myers , Timothy Olyphant, Andrea Riseborough, Ed Begley Jr., Alessandro Nivola, and [ checks notes ] Taylor Swift ? They’re in the cast as well. This isn’t an ensemble film, it’s a SAG meeting.

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Cut to: 1918. A younger, more innocent (and dual-eyed) Berendsen has no sooner joined the effort to fight the Kaiser when he’s asked to oversee an all-Black squad of doughboys. They’ve been accused of insubordination because the brass doesn’t want them wearing American uniforms. This is where Burt meets Harold, both of whom end up convalescing in a French hospital after sustaining battlefield injuries.

There’s more — dear lord, a lot more — as Russell takes us down an American history wormhole of fifth columnists, political chicanery and the rancid rich. An opening disclaimer informs us that “a lot of this actually happened,” and it does not take a college professor to measure the distance between the past threats to the democratic ideals we hold near and dear and what our current future may bring in light of the past few years. (Homegrown Nazis — now more than ever!) You couldn’t be blamed for thinking the filmmaker might be mounting a call to arms cloaked in period duds, especially when the voiceover dips into the didactic during a third-act showdown between the clearly drawn good guys and the corrupt. (“What could be more American than a dictatorship built by American business?”) The commentary nudging is actually the least effective aspect of Amsterdam, not because it isn’t pertinent or that Russell doesn’t share the same concerns many of us do, so much as the fact that his heart clearly lies elsewhere.

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The generosity extends to the cast at large. Some have issues with Washington’s somewhat recessive take on Goodman, legal eagle and lover of Robbie’s aristocratic kook. But when seen in tandem with what Bale is doing, it fits the bigger picture better — he’s the ballast that allows Bale to boing off him and bounce around the sets. Robbie understands that her third party is one part daffy-dame screwball archetype and one part romantic ideal, yet doesn’t let herself be confined by either role. The supporting cast either gets to play very straight (De Niro’s patriotic military man, Swift’s grieving young woman), very broad (Riseborough’s elitist wife, Olyphant’s racist thug) or take part in wonderfully oddball double acts (Shannon and Myers intelligence-agency handlers, Nivola and Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts’ dim-witted cops; Malek and Taylor-Joy’s unscrupulous One-percenters). It would be unkind to note that not all performers are equal here. It would also be accurate.

And then there’s Amsterdam itself, the city that acts as a sort of symbolic title in the same way that Casablanca does for its classic ensemble drama. It’s the paradise lost, the moment before history and “the dream” repeats themselves. It’s what Robbie calls “the good part,” when these three can be what they call “their true selves.” It’s the geographical representation of a deep, lasting, sustaining friendship. And much like Casablanca, this movie will end with a sacrifice that attempts to right a handful of wrongs on both a macro- and a micro-level. There is no shortage of movies that still traffic in shameless, manipulative uplift (see: this year’s Oscar winner ). Yet Russell, to his everlasting credit, has made a film in which having cockeyed optimism, at this moment in the world, somehow feels like a radical act. For a movie that is all over the place, it’s determination to get back to a bygone moment isn’t just wishful thinking. It suggests, in own roundabout way, that a return to the past can also signal the beginning of a fresh start.

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Amsterdam has a bunch of big stars and a very busy plot, all of which amounts to painfully less than the sum of its dazzling parts.

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Simultaneously overstuffed and undernourished, frantic and meandering, “Amsterdam” is one big, star-studded, hot mess of a movie.

Christian Bale , Margot Robbie , John David Washington , Robert De Niro , Anya Taylor-Joy , Rami Malek , Chris Rock , Michael Shannon , Zoe Saldana , Alessandro Nivola and many more major names: How can you amass this cast and go so wrong? Simply putting them in a room and watching them chit-chat for two-plus hours—or say nothing at all, for that matter—would have been infinitely more interesting. Alas, David O. Russell has concocted all manner of adventures and detours, wacky hijinks, and elaborate asides to occupy his actors, none of which is nearly as clever or charming as he seems to think.

Over and over again, I asked myself as I was watching “Amsterdam”: What is this movie about? Where are we going with this? I’d have to stop and find my bearings: What exactly is happening now? And not in a thrilling, stimulating way, as in “ Memento ,” for example, or “ Cats .” It’s all a dizzying piffle—until it stops dead in its tracks and forces several of its stars to make lengthy speeches elucidating the points Russell himself did not make over the previous two rambling hours. The grand finale gives us some interminable, treacly narration, explaining the importance of love and kindness over the film’s images of bohemian rhapsody we’d just seen not too long ago. 

As is the case in so many of the writer/director’s other movies, we have the sensation as we’re watching that anything could happen at any moment. He typically employs such verve in his camerawork and takes such ambitious tonal swings that you wonder in amazement how he manages to keep it all cohesive and intact. This time, he doesn’t. Because “Amsterdam” lacks the compelling visual language of “ Three Kings ” or “ American Hustle ,” for instance, and it lacks characters with heart-on-their-sleeve humanity like he shows us in “ The Fighter ” or “ Silver Linings Playbook .” Despite the prodigious talent on display here, not a single figure on screen feels like a real person. Each is a collection of idiosyncrasies, some more intriguing than others.

To put it in the simplest terms possible, Bale and Washington play longtime best friends suspected of a murder they didn’t commit. While trying to uncover the truth about what’s going on, they stumble upon an even larger and more sinister plot. Russell’s script jumps around in time from 1933 New York to 1918 Amsterdam and back again, but he’s using this time frame—and the fascist ideologies that rose to prominence then—to make a statement about what’s been going on the past several years in right-wing American politics. Ultimately, he hammers us over the head with this point. But first, whimsy.

Bale’s Burt Berendsen is a folksy doctor with a glass eye that keeps falling out. He’s hooked on his own homemade pain meds, which cause him to collapse to the ground—which also causes his eye to fall out. Bale is doing intense shtick throughout; he is committed to the bit. Washington’s Harold Woodman served with him in the same racially mixed Army battalion in France during WWI; he’s now an attorney, and the more levelheaded of the two. When their beloved general dies suspiciously, his daughter (a distractingly stiff Taylor Swift ) asks them to investigate.

But soon, they’re on the run, inspiring a flashback to how they met in the first place. This is actually the most entertaining part of the film. Russell luxuriates in the duo’s wistful memories of their post-war years in Amsterdam with Robbie’s Valerie Voze, the nurse who cared for them when they were injured and quickly became their co-conspirator in all kinds of boozy escapades. The celebrated cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki , a multiple Oscar winner for his work with Alfonso Cuaron (“ Gravity ”) and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (“ Birdman ,” “ The Revenant ”), eases up on the sepia tones that often feel so smothering in an effort to capture a feeling of nostalgia. There’s real life and joy to these sequences in Amsterdam that’s missing elsewhere. Robbie, a brunette for a change, looks impossibly luminous—but her character is also a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, a secretly wealthy heiress who turns bullet shrapnel into art. It’s a heavy-handed metaphor for the healing presence she provides in Burt and Harold’s lives.

That’s what’s so frustrating about “Amsterdam”: It’ll offer a scene or an interaction or a performance here or there that’s legitimately entertaining and maybe comes close to hitting the mark Russell is trying to hit. Several duos and subplots along the way might have made for a more interesting movie than the one we got: Malek and Taylor-Joy as Valerie’s snobby, striving brother and sister-in-law, for example, are a bizarre hoot. (And here’s a great place to stop and mention the spectacular costume design, the work of J.R. Hawbaker and the legendary Albert Wolsky . The period detail is varied and vivid, but the dresses Taylor-Joy wears, all in bold shades of red, are especially inspired.) Nivola and Matthias Schoenaerts as mismatched cops who can’t stand each other can be amusing, and it seems like they’re really trying to infuse their characters with traits and motivations beyond what’s on the page. Shannon and Mike Myers as a pair of spies are good for a goofy laugh or two, nothing more.

But despite these sporadic moments of enjoyment, “Amsterdam” is ultimately so convoluted and tedious that it obliterates such glimmers of goodwill. It’s so weighed down by its overlong running time and self-indulgent sense of importance that its core message about the simple need for human decency feels like a cynical afterthought. And whispering the word “Amsterdam” throughout, as several of the characters do, doesn’t even begin to cast the magic spell it seeks to conjure.

Now playing in theaters. 

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series “Ebert Presents At the Movies” opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

• Christian Bale as Burt Berendsen
• John David Washington as Harold Woodman
• Margot Robbie as Valerie Voze
• Robert De Niro as General Gil Dillenbeck
• Anya Taylor-Joy as Libby Voze
• Rami Malek as Tom Voze
• Chris Rock as Milton King
• Zoe Saldaña as Irma St. Clair
• Mike Myers as Paul Canterbury
• Michael Shannon as Henry Norcross
• Timothy Olyphant as Taron Milfax
• Andrea Riseborough as Beatrice Vandenheuvel
• Taylor Swift as Liz Meekins
• Matthias Schoenaerts as Detective Lem Getweiler
• Alessandro Nivola as Detective Hiltz
• Ed Begley Jr. as General Bill Meekins
• Daniel Pemberton
• David O. Russell

Cinematographer

• Emmanuel Lubezki
• Jay Cassidy

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Review: David O. Russell goes to war in ‘Amsterdam,’ but this historical farce Nether comes together

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The title of “Amsterdam,” the typically busy and discombulating new movie written and directed by David O. Russell, refers to the events of a memorable Dutch idyll in 1918, toward the end of the First World War. For two wounded American servicemen, Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale) and Harold Woodman (John David Washington), and a nurse, Valerie Voze (Margot Robbie), overseeing their recovery, the city of Amsterdam becomes a temporary refuge and playground. The French New Wave may still be decades away, but there’s an invigorating dash of Truffaut (but really, true-friend) energy to these proceedings. For a few tender, spirited moments you might be reminded of “Jules and Jim” or perhaps Godard’s “Band of Outsiders,” even when Burt’s shot-up face is wrapped in bandages or when Valerie, an aspiring Dadaist, is molding sculptures from the bloody bullets and shrapnel she’s extracted from her patients’ wounds.

Russell himself pushed the carnage of war to aesthetic extremes in 1999’s “Three Kings,” when he turned his camera into an X-ray and showed us — in squirm-inducing, viscera-rupturing detail — what a bullet can do to the human body. While it features its own lovingly detailed glimpses of torn flesh and lingering scars, “Amsterdam” seems rather less inclined to get too deep inside its characters, physically or otherwise. Like Russell’s splendid ’70s caper, “American Hustle” (2013), the movie is a roving piece of period whimsy and a madcap history lesson, a parade of concealed motives and cunning switcheroos loosely inspired — and just barely held together — by real-world events. (It also shares with that movie a few gifted Russell regulars, including production designer Judy Becker and editor Jay Cassidy.)

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But unlike “Hustle,” “Amsterdam” only fitfully locates the moment-to-moment comic verve — or the bittersweet sense of longing — that would give these characters and their farcical shenanigans the deeper human resonance it’s clearly aiming for. What the movie boasts instead is a lot of surface-level freneticism, done in a now-ritualistic Russell mode of controlled chaos that more often than not turns creakily mechanical. There’s a flashback-juggling structure, a large ensemble cast that seems to multiply by the minute and a lot of drunk and disorderly camerawork (vaguely recognizable as that of the gifted Emmanuel Lubezki) that dances its way through scene after scene of rambunctiously choreographed action.

That action kicks off in New York in 1933; the interwar years are slowly rumbling to a close, and whispers of unrest can be heard beneath the bustling city noise and the notes of Daniel Pemberton’s airily charming score. Joining forces not for the first time, Burt, a doctor, and Harold, an attorney, are quietly brought in to investigate the sudden demise of an Army general, Bill Meekins (Ed Begley Jr.), who commanded their regiment during World War I. Taylor Swift pops up for a suitably swift cameo as Meekins’ daughter, Liz, hanging around just long enough to voice her teary-eyed suspicions of foul play before leaving the dogged Burt and Harold to figure out what’s going on.

So begins a shaggily plotted whodunit that the movie approaches with a sometimes charming, sometimes tiresome and faintly Raymond Chandler-esque reluctance to solve. Unsurprisingly, Russell crams in as many odd jolts and detours as possible, among them an impromptu autopsy (made bearable by Zoe Saldaña as a nurse who’s stolen Burt’s heart), a few violent ambushes and one or two relaxing conversations on the subject of birdwatching. (Michael Shannon and Mike Myers pop up as charming amateur ornithologists, though as with almost everyone here, there’s a bit more to their identities than meets the eye.) Along the way, Russell slides in that crucial 1918 flashback: We see Burt, who’s part Jewish, being shipped off to war by his status-conscious wife, Beatrice (Andrea Riseborough), and her relatives, whose antisemitism is as plain as their Park Avenue address. Burt becomes a medic with a unit modeled on the famous 369th Infantry Regiment, tending mostly to Black soldiers, like Harold, shunned by their white fellow servicemen.

For all the scurrying randomness of incident in “Amsterdam,” there’s nothing accidental about the lifelong friendship that develops between Burt and Harold, both of whom bleed in service of a racist country that despises them. (Burt even loses an eye and will spend much of the story popping a glass one in and out of its socket — an overdone bit that nonetheless packs some metaphorical punch in a movie about not always trusting what you see.) The two men are sent to hospital in Paris, where they meet the captivating Valerie, and then it’s off to those blissful days of recovery and revelry in Amsterdam. It’s here that the movie briefly spreads its wings, animated by the capriciousness of the central performances — Robbie’s mercurial wit, Washington’s seductive cool, Bale’s big heart and frizzy hair — and by a freewheeling sense of la vie bohème possibility. For a few moments, it feels as if the movie really could go anywhere.

But that feeling can’t last. Burt returns to awful Beatrice in New York, the mutually smitten Harold and Valerie go their separate ways, Amsterdam becomes a distant memory and “Amsterdam” itself comes crashing to earth. Returning to 1933, Russell does try to keep spirits aloft and the narrative engine going, though more often than not it stalls out. Burt and Harold’s investigation turns up still more supporting players, including Rami Malek and Anya Taylor-Joy as a wealthy, gabby married couple and Matthias Schoenaerts and a memorably testy Alessandra Nivola as two nosy police officers. (I’m still trying to parse Chris Rock’s narrative function, or at least figure out why the actor — reportedly so funny on the set that Bale had to avoid him to stay in character — feels so wasted here.) Amid these and other complications, our heroes will expose the roots of a sinister conspiracy, hatched by industrialists eager to overthrow Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency and hasten the rise of fascism across and beyond Europe.

“A lot of this really happened,” the script declares at the outset, deploying the kind of cheeky disclaimer language (similarly used in “American Hustle”) that allows a movie to pat itself on the back for its partial accuracy and its bold departures from the historical record. The story does jolt to life — and acquire a real center of moral gravity — once Robert De Niro shows up as the distinguished Gen. Gil Dillenbeck, a fictionalized stand-in for Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler, who ultimately brought the so-called Business Plot to public light. Still, in Russell’s topsy-turvy cosmos, historical accuracy is but one measure of truthfulness: If liberal despair has long been his guiding thematic light (especially in his delirious 2004 farce, “I Heart Huckabees” ), then here it’s the many recent and ongoing threats to global democracy that have him none too subtly wringing his hands.

That gives “Amsterdam” a certain currency in a world still reeling from the presidency of Donald Trump and the attendant rise of far-right politicians all over the globe. But there’s a nagging half-heartedness to these bids for topicality, and something less than conviction in the movie’s semisweet encouragement of optimism in the face of mounting danger. This isn’t the first (or probably the last) Russell entertainment to pull its characters back from the brink of unfathomable chaos, or to encourage its characters and its audience to give peace, love and understanding a chance. But if the memory of Amsterdam hovers over Burt, Harold and Valerie like a beacon from happier, more innocent times, then “Amsterdam” itself is another bittersweet callback, a reminder — and, only fitfully, a reclamation — of a filmmaker’s lost vitality.

‘Amsterdam’

Rating: R, for brief violence and bloody images Running time: 2 hours, 14 minutes Playing: Starts Oct. 7 in general release

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Amsterdam Should Feel Intoxicating, But It’s Exhausting

How we deal with our brokenness is the idea not so secretly at the center of most of David O. Russell’s films. In Amsterdam , he’s conjured up perhaps his most overt treatment of the subject: It opens with images of physical wounds and scars, and as the film proceeds, we realize how spiritually broken the characters are as well. Our ostensible hero is Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale), a doctor who specializes in “fixing up banged-up guys like myself” — veterans of the First World War who struggle with missing limbs and faces, “all injuries the world was happy to forget.” The year is 1933, and a new war is on the horizon, but Burt will always be defined by the last one, whose marks he carries on multiple levels: He lost his eye and part of his cheek, wears a back brace, and now is constantly on the lookout for the latest advances in mind-altering medicine to get him through the day.

Many wounds loom over Amsterdam , but the film moves with the devil-may-care verve of a comic romp. Burt and his lawyer friend Harold Woodman (John David Washington) get yanked into a bizarre mystery involving the death of a senator and beloved ex-general, which the man’s daughter (Taylor Swift) suspects to be murder. Pulled into the shenanigans is gorgeous artist Valerie (Margot Robbie), whom Burt and Harold last saw in Amsterdam many years ago: In an extended flashback, we see the blissfully hedonistic idyll the three of them lived in the years after the war when Harold and Valerie were madly in love, Valerie was making beautiful shrapnel-art, and Burt had not yet returned to New York to resume his toxic marriage to the wealthy Beatrice Vandenheuvel (Andrea Riseborough). A yearning to return to the Eden of Amsterdam animates these characters.

It’d be easy to get bogged down with the story of Amsterdam , which manages to be heavily adorned with incident and character but not particularly elaborate, despite a couple of twists at the end. At its heart, the film wants to be a hangout movie. Russell loves to fill his casts with big names — this one includes Robert De Niro, Chris Rock, Anya Taylor-Joy, Zoe Saldaña, and Rami Malek, among many others — not because he needs them to get the movies financed (though I’m sure it helps) but because he clearly loves to give actors space to strut. And strut they do. Bale’s commedia dell’arte antics contrast nicely with Washington’s straight-man stylings, while Robbie seems to be in a constant state of transformation, from French nurse to American bohemian to New York socialite, perhaps embodying the existential restlessness of the period between the wars. Michael Shannon and Mike Myers show up as a couple of spies. Alessandro Nivola and Matthias Schoenaerts show up as a couple of cops. I could happily watch entire movies about some of these side characters.

Russell’s style is one I would call aggressive empathy : He insists on reminding us that everybody lives their own life, but his films aren’t patient or generous in the ways we associate with empathy. If Jean Renoir’s famous dictum that “everyone has their reasons” was, in that director’s eyes, a gentle but melancholy truth about the world, Russell seems to regard that same reality with alternating shockwaves of wonder and horror. His movies are both indulgent celebrations of and anxious nightmares about the fact that other people exist.

Amsterdam is filled with slapstick, wordplay, proto-musical numbers, and moments of broad, actorly abandon — so much so that, despite the fact that the story often feels like it’s on a predictable path, you never know if the movie itself will just stop and go in a completely different direction. Whenever it’s operating on that edge of uncertainty, the picture works marvelously. But the freewheeling freewheeling-ness can get to you after a while. As it accumulates running time (and characters and plot points), Amsterdam starts to get exhausting when it should perhaps feel liberating or intoxicating.

And Russell has difficulty tying everything up. For all its shaggy-dog qualities — and this should come as no surprise given the setting, the characters, and the premise — Amsterdam ’s tale is leading to something profound. It has big, timely points to make about spiritual injury, the specter of war, longing for lost utopias, and the rise of fascism. By the time the picture starts to lock back into its story, however, you might realize that it has become a totally different movie. A more serious movie but not necessarily a better one. Still, at least we had Amsterdam.

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Amsterdam Review: An Overcooked, But Entertaining Mystery

Starring christian bale, john david washington and margot robbie..

It will take individual members of the moviegoing audience only a few minutes to decide whether or not David O. Russell’s Amsterdam is a film that is “for them.” A manic tone is established from the outset as we are introduced to Christian Bale ’s Burt Berendsen, a Hunter S. Thompson-esque doctor and World War I veteran with a glass eye who operates a shady medical practice helping out fellow veterans in 1933 New York City. Voiceover from Burt quickly ushers us through his life and work before catapulting the character to a meeting with his best friend, John David Washington ’s Harold Woodman, a fellow veteran and attorney who proceeds to roll out a dead man in a box (Ed Begley Jr.) and introduce the corpse’s grieving daughter ( Taylor Swift ), who is certain that her father was murdered.

Quippy zaniness is the keystone of the madcap adventure, and that voice is relentless even as the film veers towards some of the most consequential subject matter in modern history. If it’s not your thing, you’ll check out immediately, but those who get onboard will find an entertaining, albeit overcooked mystery that is enhanced with what feels in the moment like a seemingly endless ensemble of talented actors who enter the picture with each new plot development.

The aforementioned dead man in a box is identified as General Bill Meekins, who not only has a close history with Burt and Harold (technically he was the one who introduced them), but was supposed to be the main speaker at a benefit that the two men are coordinating. They believe Meekins’ daughter’s claims, which then almost immediately results in more murder… and then, indicative of the movie’s weirdness, everything goes into flashback mode. We first see how Burt first met Harold during World War I in France 1918, but then we learn how the duo met Valerie Voze ( Margot Robbie ), an eccentric nurse who patches them up and saves their lives after they are nearly killed on the battlefield.

Amsterdam's manic style is matched well with an engaging mystery.

Amsterdam sports a lot of “stranger than fiction” energy (it opens with a non-committal based-on-a-true story title card reading “A lot of this really happened”), and it more than occasionally feels like it’s trying to do too much – such as with Valerie’s avant-garde artistic sensibilities making sculpture from shrapnel, and the trio coming up with a “nonsense song” comprised of random French phrases. It takes quirkiness into the red, but the film works because it’s all tied to an engaging and propulsive mystery.

Once the movie bounces back from the flashback – with Burt, Harold and Valerie’s lives becoming intertwined while they live together in the titular city after World War I – Amsterdam establishes proper stakes and keeps the narrative moving with Burt and Harold finding clues that get them closer to discovering the truth of what happened to General Meekins. It never gets particularly complex, but it also never gets stupid, and each progression in the plot keeps you wondering about what’s coming next.

Part of the fun of Amsterdam is wondering what famous face will show up next.

Said curiosity is both driven by the desire to know the answers to the movie’s biggest questions, as well as David O. Russell’s special brand of stunt casting. If I could make one particular recommendation going into Amsterdam , it would be that you should avoid looking at the film’s full cast list (and I’m actually going to stop naming names in this review beyond those I have already mentioned). Practically every line is delivered by actors who are headlining movies released throughout the year – and none of them are shortchanged. Each has a memorable part to play and a standout personality to go with it.

Of course, anchoring the whole thing is the trio headlining the adventure. Given that Christian Bale, John David Washington and Margot Robbie have proven themselves as three of the most consummate performers working today, their success should inspire little surprise, but that makes it no less wonderful. Chemistry in the triumvirate is essential to the story that David O. Russell is telling, and theirs is effortless and palpable. Between the three, Bale is given the most to work with and delivers one of his best comedic performances – rounding out his David O. Russell trilogy after making The Fighter and American Hustle – but they are all given memorable lines and moments from the writer/director’s script.

Their individual characters’ eccentricities and choices in their performances mesh impressively well together, and the movie clicks into high gear when they are all together – first in the World War I flashback, and then in 1933 when Burt and Harold are inadvertently reunited with Valerie while trying to solve the murder mystery.

Amsterdam walks a narrow tightrope line of being too much, and there are moments where knees bend and arms flail for balance, but it does stay upright and put on a show in the process. It has a distinct voice, an entertaining story to tell and a well-used phenomenal cast, which amounts to a fun cinematic experience.

Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.

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‘Amsterdam’ Review: Three Amigos Try to Save America in David O. Russell’s Ungainly Period Dramedy

Truth is relative as Christian Bale, John David Washington and Margot Robbie stumble upon a plot to overturn democracy in this overstuffed social satire from the director of 'American Hustle.'

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The film centers on a friendship between three Americans drawn into an elaborate political intrigue. The trio were never happier than when they lived together in Amsterdam after the Great War. Encouraged to enlist (and perchance to die) by his high-society in-laws, Dr. Burt Berendsen ( Christian Bale ) lost an eye and half his face in conflict, but gained a lifelong amigo in Harold Woodman ( John David Washington ), a Black soldier who — and this is among the film’s “this really happened” details — was obliged to fight in French uniform since American troops refused to integrate.

Valerie collects shrapnel from her patients, but instead of discarding these fragments, she keeps the twisted metal for artistic projects: teapots made of bomb parts and surrealist photo collages of the kind that Man Ray and Grete Stern produced in the 1930s. Burt’s also something of a sculptor — of the medical arts — rebuilding the faces of other disfigured veterans (while testing experimental painkillers on himself). For a brief, glorious moment in Amsterdam, the friends are spared the stresses of their lives — and wife (Andrea Riseborough), in Burt’s case — back in America, their shenanigans somehow sponsored by two ornithophile spies (Michael Shannon and Mike Myers, the latter heavily disguised and accented), who promise, “We’ll come a-calling at some point in the future.”

Alas, the trio’s carefree days of dancing the Charleston among the Dutch are numbered — and just as well, since this cutesy segment of the story feels overly indebted to Wes Anderson, and not in a good way (e.g., inventing a nonsense song around the French word that makes everyone laugh: “pamplemousse”). Most of the film takes place 15 years later, in New York (New Amsterdam?) in late 1933, as Burt and Harold agree to investigate the suspicious death of the superior officer who introduced them (Ed Begley Jr.), only to be framed for murder in the process. While the case doesn’t seem to be of terribly pressing urgency to the police (as detectives, stars Matthias Schoenaerts and Alessandro Nivola deliver broad character-actor performances), the pair are determined to clear their names, which brings them back in contact with Valerie.

Russell cooks up plenty of high-end kookiness (which is to say, comedic situations set in the hallways and drawing rooms of polite-society houses, like something out of a Howard Hawks or Ernst Lubitsch classic, as opposed to flat-out farce), but through it all, the bonds between these three characters are meant to be the thing that keeps us invested. Russell has miscalculated something there, however, since the 15-year separation between the friends is resolved before they even have time to miss one another in the movie, and whatever chemistry existed between Harold and Valerie’s characters never quite manifests on-screen.

Russell is right to remind Americans of this shameful moment in their past (skip this paragraph to avoid spoilers), as history books tend to downplay the amount of stateside support that Mussolini and Hitler had in the lead-up to World War II. In his novel “The Plot Against America” (adapted for HBO around the same time “Amsterdam” was filming), Philip Roth imagines an alternate reality in which Franklin D. Roosevelt was defeated by a Nazi-sympathizing Charles Lindbergh. Here, Russell spotlights more dastardly plans to actually remove the president from office. Production designer Judy Becker (who does terrific work on the film’s myriad period locations) drew inspiration from 1930s rallies, like the one Marshall Curry documented in his Oscar-nominated doc short “A Night at the Garden,” right down to the George Washington portrait hanging behind the dais.

Russell’s truth-will-out, think-for-yourself political message is ultimately what makes “Amsterdam” appealing, though the film is being marketed largely on the popular appeal of its cast. That’s a risky prospect for such an expensive picture, considering that hardly any of the stars delivers the thing that fans love most about their personas — except perhaps Chris Rock, who gets to crack wise about white supremacy. It’s beautifully shot by cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, whose swooning mix of Steadicam and handheld techniques lent an almost godlike grandeur to recent films by Terrence Malick and Alejandro G. Iñárritu, though that fluid style combines rather oddly with Russell’s more erratic comedic sensibilities.

The result has all the red flags of a flop, but takes a strong enough anti-establishment stand — and does so with wit and originality — to earn a cult following. There’s too much ambition here to write the movie off, even if “Amsterdam,” like the history it depicts, winds up taking years to be rediscovered and understood.

Reviewed at AMC Century City, Los Angeles, Sept. 19, 2022. MPA Rating: R. Running time: 134 MIN.

• Production: A 20th Century Studios release of a Regency Enterprises presentation of a New Regency, Dreamcrew Entertainment, Keep Your Head, Corazon Camera production. Producers: Arnon Milchan, Matthew Budman, Anthony Katagas, David O. Russell, Christian Bale. Executive producers: Yariv Milchan, Michael Schaefer, Sam Hanson, Drake, Adel "Future" Nur. Co-producer: Tracey Landon.
• Crew: Director, writer: David O. Russell. Camera: Emmanuel Lubezki. Editor: Jay Cassidy. Music: Daniel Pemberton.
• With: Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Alessandro Nivola, Andrea Riseborough, Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Rock, Matthias Schoenaerts, Michael Shannon, Mike Myers, Taylor Swift, Timothy Olyphant, Zoe Saldaña, Rami Malek, Robert De Niro.

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Amsterdam Review

04 Nov 2022

At one point in Amsterdam , there is a scene involving (deep breath) Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington. Remi Malek, Anya Taylor-Joy, Robert De Niro, Chris Rock, Mike Myers, Michael Shannon, Matthias Schoenaerts and Alessandro Nivola. Perhaps the single most stacked-with-talent scene in 2022, it points to one of the problems with David O. Russell ’s sprawling, intermittently enjoyable film: it is simultaneously over-stuffed and under-nourished. It proffers ambitious filmmaking, full of strong craft, great bits and big thematic swings but Amsterdam never really catches fire and fails to amount to more than the sum of its occasionally impressive parts.

Amsterdam opens with the title card: ‘A lot of this really happened’, mostly referring to a little-known dark chapter of US history — an elaborate political coup conspiracy — that emerges in the film’s second half. Before it gets to that, Russell’s script is a mash-up of different sub-genres — crime flick, Hawksian screwball comedy, two-guys-and-a-girl movie — that never finds the right tenor to unify its whackier and more sober elements. It’s at its most fun when, in a lengthy flashback, it etches the friendship between doctor Burt ( Christian Bale ), lawyer Harold ( John David Washington ) and nurse Valerie ( Margot Robbie ), evoking a freewheeling, capricious Jules Et Jim vibe.

Neither serious enough to be sharp satire, nor energetic enough to deliver exuberant farce.

This idealistic, sweet quality ultimately can’t survive in an over-complicated murder plot that blows up into something bigger. Russell wants to use it to make comments about contemporary America (clue: standing up to fascists) but it’s neither serious enough to be sharp satire, nor energetic enough to deliver exuberant farce.

The central trio are winningly played, if thinly drawn, Bale and Robbie’s characters boasting an over-abundance of quirks (him: a false eye that keeps falling out, a penchant for experimenting with meds; her: pipe-smoking, making sculpture out of shrapnel) whereas Washington is somewhat flavourless by comparison. The supporting cast, from Malek and Taylor-Joy’s social-climbers to Myers and Shannon’s bird-watching spies, register without being especially memorable. Taylor Swift gets an instantly meme-able moment. It’s left to Russell regular De Niro, playing a comrade of the murdered General, to provide an anchor for the wayward proceedings.

The Russell film it most resembles is American Hustle , sharing its flamboyance and broad scope, not to mention great costumes — take a bow J.R. Hawbaker and the legendary Albert Wolsky. From production designer Judy Becker’s recreations of ‘30s New York to cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s gorgeous, fluid, sepia-tinged images, Amsterdam is a treat to look at. It is also a delight to listen to, Daniel Pemberton’s score adding lightness and much-needed urgency, mainly through woodwind action. It’s a shame, then, that such technical proficiency couldn’t align to better-judged storytelling. Amsterdam wants to celebrate love, humanity and kindness in the messy tapestry of life. It just needed more care and control in weaving the threads.

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Common Sense Media Review

Busy but interesting period dramedy has gore, swearing.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Amsterdam is a 1930s-set dramedy in which two veterans of World War I (Christian Bale and John David Washington) must clear their names of a murder charge with the help of an old friend (Margot Robbie) while also protecting their country against evil forces. The complex plot can…

Why Age 15+?

Extremely gory wounds, missing eye. Removing shrapnel from bloody wounds. Woman

Infrequent use of "f--k," "s--t," "son of a bitch," "bastard," "ass," "hell," "d

A doctor experiments on himself with new painkillers; he sometimes passes out, c

Kissing. Romantic couple.

Any Positive Content?

Clear themes of friendship, love, and trust apparent in the three main character

The three main characters are a White man, a White woman, and a Black man. There

The main characters sometimes attempt to help others. Characters are generally a

Violence & Scariness

Extremely gory wounds, missing eye. Removing shrapnel from bloody wounds. Woman shoved in front of car, run over, body smashed underneath car. Guns and shooting. Characters shot, bloody wounds. Man punched, knocked out cold (glass eye pops out of his head). Painfully resetting dislocated arm. Autopsy scene, with organs shown. Arguing.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Infrequent use of "f--k," "s--t," "son of a bitch," "bastard," "ass," "hell," "damn," "oh my God."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

A doctor experiments on himself with new painkillers; he sometimes passes out, comically. Later, he's said to have become briefly addicted to these medicines. Injections. Characters take special eyedrops said to numb pain. Social drinking. Pipe smoking. A character with vertigo who's walking unevenly is accused of being drunk.

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Sex, Romance & Nudity

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Positive Messages

Clear themes of friendship, love, and trust apparent in the three main characters' relationship. Other messages include idea that anything goes in the search for truth, especially when someone has been wrongly accused. Champions democracy over fascism.

Diverse Representations

The three main characters are a White man, a White woman, and a Black man. There's an interracial romance. Racism and antisemitism are depicted as part of the era the movie is set in, but these ideologies are frowned upon. Supporting cast includes several characters of color.

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Positive Role Models

The main characters sometimes attempt to help others. Characters are generally accepting of others across lines of color, religion, and gender.

Parents need to know that Amsterdam is a 1930s-set dramedy in which two veterans of World War I ( Christian Bale and John David Washington ) must clear their names of a murder charge with the help of an old friend ( Margot Robbie ) while also protecting their country against evil forces. The complex plot can sometimes be hard to follow, but it's hard to dismiss, and the theme of friendship stands out. Expect moments of extreme gore involving wounded soldiers in the hospital. A woman is also brutally run over by a car, characters are shot (lots of blood), characters are punched, etc. Language includes infrequent uses of "f--k," "s--t," "son of a bitch," and more. Characters kiss, there's social drinking and smoking, and a woman is accused of being drunk (she's just dizzy). A character experiments with painkillers and is said to have become briefly addicted. Injections are shown, and characters take pain-killing eyedrops. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (6)
• Kids say (3)

Based on 6 parent reviews

Amazing show

Very good movie........go see it., what's the story.

In AMSTERDAM, it's the 1930s in New York, and Burt Berendsen ( Christian Bale ) is a doctor working to ease wounded war veterans' pain. His best friend, Harold Woodman ( John David Washington ), is a lawyer. Together, they're hired by Liz Meekins ( Taylor Swift ) to perform a secret autopsy on General Bill Meekins, Burt and Harold's former commanding officer, to determine whether he was actually murdered. Shortly after, Liz is shoved in front of a moving car and run over in the street. Burt and Harold are blamed. Flashing back to 1918, during the war, young Burt and Harold are badly injured and sent to the hospital, where they're tended by nurse Valerie ( Margot Robbie ). The three form a strong friendship, and Harold and Valerie fall in love. After the war, they spend a beautiful period living as a trio in Amsterdam. But flashing forward again to the '30s, Burt and Harold must find a way to clear their names, which involves getting another general, Gil Dillenbeck ( Robert De Niro ), to speak at the veterans' reunion, thereby exposing the real killers. The characters' past also finds a way of catching up to them, lending a helping hand.

Is It Any Good?

Wildly ambitious and thoroughly complex, this sprawling David O. Russell period piece has a thick, gummy quality as if it were made in a vacuum, yet it's too relevant to entirely dismiss. The airless quality of Amsterdam -- perhaps a result of the combination of the great Emmanuel Lubezki's lush, glossy cinematography and Russell's weird sense of humor -- gives it an odd dreamy effect. It's sometimes a little too easy for your brain to wander away. Describing the plot is a challenge: Even after going on at some length, you might somehow skip over characters played by such heavyweights as Chris Rock , Anya Taylor-Joy , Rami Malek , Zoe Saldana , Matthias Schoenaerts , Michael Shannon , Mike Myers , and more.

Bale's outsized performance, frequently recalling Al Pacino 's scenery-chewing "Big Boy Caprice" in Dick Tracy , is another factor that keeps the movie from feeling grounded; it's like a crazy cartoon in which earthly logic does not apply. (Robbie joins him in that category during the movie's second half, when her character stumbles and wobbles about thanks to a case of vertigo.) Yet while Amsterdam is exceedingly busy, it's not necessarily messy; Russell attacks it with an admirable confidence. And since its 1930s-era political themes appear to still have modern relevance, perhaps it's a movie that will live on through multiple viewings and further context.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Amsterdam 's violence . How did it make you feel? Was it exciting? Shocking? What did the movie show or not show to achieve this effect? Why is that important?

How are drinking, smoking, and drug use depicted? Are they glamorized? Are there consequences? Why is that important?

Is it hard to believe that some Americans supported fascism during the 1930s? How is that theme relevant today?

What do you think of Valerie's artwork made from shrapnel extracted from wounded soldiers? Is it offensive, like some characters say? Is it good for art to shock or provoke? Why, or why not?

How do the movie's setting and era affect the characters' circumstances and situations? How have things changed since then?

Movie Details

• In theaters : October 7, 2022
• On DVD or streaming : December 6, 2022
• Cast : Christian Bale , Margot Robbie , John David Washington
• Director : David O. Russell
• Inclusion Information : Female actors, Black actors
• Studio : 20th Century Fox
• Genre : Comedy
• Topics : Friendship
• Run time : 134 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : brief violence and bloody images
• Last updated : April 4, 2024

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Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Amsterdam Goes For Wokeness Over Substance

David O. Russell's latest film is giving me flashbacks of that video of A-list celebrities singing “Imagine” to us over Zoom.

Amsterdam, David O. Russell's first film in over seven years, begins with a title card that explains what people have come to be familiar with in true-story films, telling us, "a lot of this really happened." What the audience learns after, however, is that not only did most of what you just saw arguably never occur, but the big scandal itself may have never even taken place at all. You don’t get the answer to one of America’s best-kept political secrets at Amsterdam 's end . You mostly just get tricked into learning what this crime caper has covertly been leading toward this entire time.

The story begins with Dr. Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale), a half-Jewish, half-Christian Manhattanite who treats veterans and has a wonky glass eye from his own tour of service in World War I. He's clearly a guy who never could have existed in real life—or if he did, he couldn't have had anything to do with this story. For all the nonsense that ensues in Amsterdam , Bale is the film's one shining beacon of hope. He's fully committed to his character, as opposed to some of his castmates, and his slapstick comedic timing is one of Amsterdam 's only saving graces. Like a reluctant noir detective, he's constantly jostled around and thrown to the ground, occasionally having to paw around for his lost eye like Velma's glasses in Scooby-Doo .

War buddy Harold Woodman (John David Washington) calls and informs him that their former army general, Senator Bill Meekins (a corpse-like Ed Begley Jr.) has been murdered. The Senator's daughter, Elizabeth (Taylor Swift), contacts Burt to perform a secret autopsy. Yes, the mega-pop star is here for two scenes—one of which will surely be memed out of existence. After another murder takes place, the gang becomes suspects in a larger political scandal. A long, impossible-to-solve-yourself plot occurs over the course of the film, wherein every new character you meet is an instantly recognizable celebrity. (Cue: Margot Robbie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Remi Malek, Zoe Saldaña, Mike Myers, Chris Rock, Michael Shannon, and Timothy Olyphant). Eventually, all roads lead to retired General Gil Dillenbeck (Robert De Niro). He's a decorated veteran based on real-life figure Major General Smedley Butler, who spoke about late payments from the Great Depression during what is known as the 1932 Bonus Army march on Washington. It's the first time in Amsterdam that I was certain we got to something that actually took place in American history.

It may have taken forever to get here after galavanting in an Amsterdam war hospital and a wealthy businessman's estate, but this is when the film finally gets to why David O. Russell seemingly made the damn thing. You see, a bunch of old-timey business tycoons allegedly planned to take over the government and replace then-ill President Franklin D. Roosevelt with a puppet dictator. They want to pay the General a large sum of money to give a big speech at Doctor Burt's annual veteran's event in support of their fascist cause, but ol' De Niro just can't do it. Instead, he gives a rousing speech about the need to uphold truth, democracy, and freedom. Surprise! The ending of the film is nothing more than that video of A-list celebrities singing “Imagine” to us over Zoom .

Clearly, David O. Russell is another creative who saw Trump become the President, lost his mind, and then gathered as many celebrities as he could to defend one of the most agreeable stances in the history of the world: that hate is bad and kindness is good. It's the kind of lukewarm, on-the-nose take that elicited audible groans throughout the theater. Amsterdam wasn't an interesting murder mystery with a rewarding payoff. It was just the closest thing in American history that David O. Russell could find that mimicked the January 6 insurrection. "You don't get here without things starting a long time ago," Bale's Dr. Burt says.

Known as the 1934 "Business Plot," Major Gen. Smedley Butler really did give an address to a special House committee regarding his belief that a small cabal of wealthy businessmen was plotting a political conspiracy to install a dictator. He said that they were backed by a private army of nearly 500,000 veterans and that he was asked to lead it. The only problem? It seemed that no one was really interested in that happening. After General Butler gave his testimony, every party allegedly involved called the plot a complete fantasy. Nothing ever happened, the special House committee couldn't find any evidence of a planned coup, and an independent investigation by The New York Times concluded just as much as well. In a 1934 article titled " Plot Without Plotters ," Times journalists mocked that " No military officer of the U. S. since the late, tempestuous George Custer has succeeded in publicly floundering in so much hot water as Smedley Darlington Butler." Ouch!

But the "what-if" of the General's allegations describes what many believe could have also been the "what-if" of the U.S. Capitol attack, even though neither event came even close to accomplishing its goal. If audiences are going to Amsterdam to look for artistic takes on the current state of the world, "we need more love and kindness" is quite a layman’s response—especially from some of the world's most recognizable celebrities. As filmmaker Paul Schrader said at a recent New York Film Festival Q&A , audiences are simply just not as excited to hear movies work through the problems of our time as they might have been during the anti-war movement or social revolutions of the '60s and '70s.

Why? Maybe because those problems have still not been solved some 60 years later. Most people no longer go to the movies for “takes,” but to escape reality entirely. Hell, most people no longer even really go to the movies. There’s a reason why the leader of the Avengers—a superhero literally named Captain America—fought a big purple monster in space instead of giving oratories on why we should protect American freedom at all costs. You could argue that kindness is seemingly the message this world still needs, sure. But Christian Bale's character going into self-induced ecstasy because his two best friends are in an interracial relationship does not help the bare-bones wokeness similar films fail to make even just a little more nuanced. Even so, the down-your-throat optimism at the end of Amsterdam is certainly not the vehicle this film needed for any sort of entertaining climax. I've got plenty of other places to be preached to.

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Review: ‘Amsterdam’ wastes incredible talent on a dull story

This image released by 20th Century Studios shows, from left, Christian Bale, Margot Robbie and John David Washington in a scene from “Amsterdam.” (Merie Weismiller Wallace/20th Century Studios via AP)

This image released by 20th Century Studios shows, from left, John David Washington, Margot Robbie, Rami Malek and Anya Taylor-Joy in a scene from “Amsterdam.” (Merie Weismiller Wallace/20th Century Studios via AP)

This image released by 20th Century Studios shows, from left, Michael Shannon, Mike Myers, Christian Bale, Chris Rock and Robert De Niro in a scene from “Amsterdam.” (Merie Weismiller Wallace/20th Century Studios via AP)

This image released by 20th Century Studios shows, clockwise from left, Anya Taylor-Joy, Rami Malek, Christian Bale, Robert De Niro and Margot Robbie in a scene from “Amsterdam.” (Merie Weismiller Wallace/20th Century Studios via AP)

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The stars appear one after the other — a banquet of talent, a glut of inventiveness — and yet nothing clicks. Hollywood’s most famous squirm in a slog.

Welcome to “Amsterdam,” writer and director David O. Russell’s answer to the question: Can some of the top actors in the world manage to elevate poor material? The answer is a dull no. It becomes a slaughterhouse.

Just look at this lead cast: Christian Bale, Margot Robbie and John David Washington. Russell wastes them with pointless dialogue and tedious scenes.

Then imagine a second tier of roles with Alessandro Nivola, Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Rock, Michael Shannon, Mike Myers, Taylor Swift, Zoe Saldaña, Rami Malek and Robert De Niro. All are left powerless. They are in a charisma-removal machine.

Bale and Washington play World War I veterans and fierce friends — soldiers who crossed the racial divide in France — and Robbie plays an inventive nurse who treats them. This bonded trio stumble onto a plot to overthrow the U.S. government while being framed for murder in 1930s New York.

It uses these three fictional characters to explore a real event in the runup to the Second World War in which a cabal of wealthy American businessmen conspired to overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt by duping a retired general popular among veterans into being their figurehead.

“Amsterdam” shifts from 1933 to 1918 as it fills out backstories and love affairs. After returning to the ‘30s, Bale has become a kindly doctor and Washington’s character becomes a lawyer, both helping fellow vets. The nurse is strung out on prescription drugs.

But unable to find a tone — screwball, noir, whodunit, rom-com, satire or thriller — the film plods along at its own airless, internal pace, leaving most of the actors so befuddled it’s not always clear they know what they’re aiming at either.

It’s a film where no one seems to answer a direct question, gruesome autopsies are performed on camera followed by whimsically sung ditties, and a script that tries for the profound when it says things like people “follow the wrong God home.”

“This is so strange,” says the good doctor at one point. “What does it mean?” Don’t ask us.

“Amsterdam” reaches for something contemporary to say about race relations, concentration of wealth, veterans and fascism but ends up with a plodding, mannerist noise. This is what dollar bills must smell like burning. One starts to wonder if it was all a tax write-off.

Take Bale, who already reached his glass-eye limit onscreen when he starred in “Big Short.” Somehow he agreed to another such role, this time with the eyeball popping out numerous times and spilling on the ground. He attacks his role with a weird “Columbo” thing going, tilting angularly and adopting a rich New York accent.

Washington and Robbie have apparently chosen to ignore Bale’s lead by acting as if they are in two separate and different movies — she plays a manic pixie artist who uses shrapnel to make sculptures and he makes his character stone-faced and passive. Everyone else seems to be badly mimicking old ‘30s films. (Swift sings at one point but otherwise she is marooned and wooden.)

It’s not just the cast that is taken down: Emmanuel Lubezki, a celebrated director of photography who wowed with “Gravity” and “The Revenant,” turns in a film that seems very brown and undynamic.

Russell, the director of such taut dramas as “Three Kings” and “American Hustle,” has clearly vanished here. You can almost hear the collective rejoinder from the real city of Amsterdam: Why’d you do us dirty, man?

“Amsterdam,” a 20th Century Studios release exclusively for movie theaters starting Friday, is rated R for brief violence and bloody images. Running time: 134 minutes. No stars out of four.

MPAA definition of R: Restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

Online: https://www.20thcenturystudios.com/movies/amsterdam

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

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‘amsterdam’ review: christian bale and margot robbie head starry ensemble in david o. russell’s chaotic cautionary tale.

The 1930s-set comedy thriller’s stacked cast also includes John David Washington, Robert De Niro, Rami Malek, Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Rock, Zoe Saldaña and Taylor Swift.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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Adam sandler says his family has supported taylor swift and travis kelce's romance from the start, would a taylor swift endorsement actually impact the presidential race.

Every new movie from Russell now stirs up allegations of his abusive behavior on- and off-set for relitigation on Film Twitter. But that hasn’t hurt his ability to draw top talent. The phalanx of stars will be the main attraction with this long-gestating Fox project, going out through Disney, even if the cautionary note about history repeating itself doesn’t lack for contemporary relevance.

While Russell’s screenplay introduces them in a choppy flashback structure that starts in New York in 1933 before rewinding 15 years, a trio of fast friends forms the story’s core. They are Burt Berendsen ( Christian Bale ), a doctor experimenting outside the medical establishment with new pain treatments, particularly for wounded war veterans; his attorney chum Harold Woodman ( John David Washington ); and wealthy artist Valerie Voze ( Margot Robbie ).

They met in France in 1918, while serving in World War I. Burt was urged to enlist by the blue-blood family of his since-estranged wife Beatrice (Andrea Riseborough). Her snobbish parents (Casey Biggs, Dey Young) felt that becoming a war hero might paper over his half Jewish, half Catholic working-class background and make him a better fit for the family’s Park Avenue medical practice.

Their friendship was at its sweetest in Amsterdam, where Valerie introduced them to Paul Canterbury (Mike Myers) and Henry Norcross (Michael Shannon), intelligence officers for the British and American governments, respectively, as well as ornithological enthusiasts thrown out of the international bird-watchers society for stealing eggs from the nests of near-extinct species. Canterbury also manufactures glass eyes, allowing him to provide a replacement for the eye Burt lost in combat.

All this might seem a fussy overload of background detail, and indeed, the movie often feels like it’s piling on eccentricities in a bid to out-quirk Wes Anderson. The bond uniting Burt and Harold and Valerie is platonic, though tinged by hesitant romance between the latter two. But Russell’s screenplay is too manic to establish the three-way union forged during the Amsterdam idyll as the film’s true heart, despite its title.

The story becomes even busier with the 1933 plot, which bolts out of the gate when well-heeled mystery woman Liz Meekins ( Taylor Swift ) contacts Burt and Harold to ask for their help. She’s suspicious about the death of her father, the beloved former Army general Bill Meekins (Ed Begley Jr.), who oversaw the 369th and who died under murky circumstances during a recent return passage by ship from Europe. The general was scheduled to be guest speaker at an upcoming New York veterans’ reunion gala.

In case the character gallery isn’t already crowded enough for you, there’s also Valerie’s philanthropist brother Tom ( Rami Malek ) and his wife Libby ( Anya Taylor-Joy ). It won’t even have registered to most viewers that Valerie drifted out of Harold and Burt’s orbit after the war until they turn up at the Voze mansion while investigating Meekins’ death and find her heavily medicated for a supposed nervous disorder.

A related crime that occurs early on puts Burt and Harold on the radar of fellow WWI vet Detective Lem Getweiler (Matthias Schoenaerts) and his dimwit flat-footed partner Det. Hiltz (Alessandro Nivola).

I confess I found all this messy and exhausting until Burt and Harold’s investigation leads them to Meekins’ army buddy General Gil Dillenbeck (De Niro), living a quiet life in the leafy suburbs with his droll, doting wife (Beth Grant). Inspired by Armed Forces legend Major General Smedley Butler, who at the time of his death in 1940 was the most decorated U.S. Marine in history, Dillenbeck provides a welcome anchor to the story, while De Niro’s stern authority in the role helps whip the wandering tone into line.

That American conspiracy plot is rooted in history, tied to the rise of Fascism in Italy and Germany; it’s a fascinating story, withstanding Russell’s efforts to kill it with over-embellishment. The writer-director claims the film’s genesis dates back before the recent resurgence of the White Supremacist movement, the swirl of QAnon lunacy and far-right attempts to undermine the democratic integrity of the American government. But the parallels with our current reality are unmistakable, while the acknowledgment of shameful footnotes such as forced sterilization clinics touches on the evil of racial “cleansing.”

Although Amsterdam maintains a stubbornly hopeful belief that goodness will prevail, the film is also realistic about the resilience of hate in our political culture and the fact that the deep-pocketed instigators of jackboot menace are seldom punished. It makes for a stirring final act, even if the sobering message doesn’t always sync up with Russell’s chaotically cartoonish approach — a mercurial divide mirrored in Daniel Pemberton’s score, which veers between high intrigue and whimsy.

But this is primarily a character-driven movie, even if that field has so many people jostling for space that the material might have been better suited to limited-series treatment. Some of the performances don’t have much scope to stretch beyond caricature, but among the secondary characters that make an impression are Malek’s Tom Voze, an oily balance of charm and creepiness; Taylor-Joy’s similarly two-faced Libby, a climber who gets amusingly giddy around De Niro’s general; Saldaña, wise and grounded as Irma, casually discussing the finer points of love over a corpse; and Riseborough, a coddled Daddy’s girl still struggling to reconcile her affections with familial expectations.

As for the central trio, Washington exudes an easy charisma that hasn’t always been apparent in his previous roles, while Robbie melds old-fashioned movie-star glamor with modern intelligence, her bohemian spirit making her credible as a rebellious heiress, an idiosyncratic artist and a woman whose heart operates by its own rules. Valerie believes in love and art and kindness, making her the movie’s unofficial mascot.

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‘Amsterdam’ Review: David O. Russell’s Star-Studded Plea for Kindness Rings Hollow

David ehrlich.

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A star-studded new historical comedy that’s amusing at best, noxious at worst, and frantically self-insistent upon its own negligible entertainment value at all times as it strains to find the beauty in the mad tapestry of life? That’s right: David O. Russell is back. And while the volatile director’s recent work (“Joy,” “American Hustle”) has been damning enough to dampen enthusiasm for this comeback on its own — even without Russell’s various personal controversies — it doesn’t exactly help matters that his first movie in seven years is a wildly over-cranked plea to “protect kindness” that rings every bit as forced and hollow as you might expect from someone with such a pronounced reputation for killing it himself.

But David O. Russell lives for mess. It’s his ideal state and favorite subject. “ Amsterdam ,” as with all of the director’s movies, is clearly the work of someone who wanted it to be this way; someone who wanted his sepia-toned noir about one of the United States’ clumsiest political conspiracies to feel like a humorless farce, a sexless “Jules and Jim” love triangle, and also a guileless rebuttal to the latest flare-up of American fascism all at the same time.

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Such exuberant muchness has become Russell’s signature over the last two decade, as most of his 21st century films — starting and peaking with the miraculous “I Heart Huckabees” — have run themselves ragged trying to thread a measure of divine togetherness through the fraying quilt of our existence (“When you get the blanket thing you can relax because everything you could ever want or be you already have and are”). A worthy subject, to be sure, but in order to dramatize how everything is connected on a subatomic level, Russell first has to skin his films with a superficial layer of chaos. In order to hear the beauty in the breakdown, he first has to orchestrate a cacophony of white noise.

In Russell’s more “grounded” fare — namely earlier work like “Three Kings,” but also 2012’s “Silver Linings Playbook,” during which the filmmaker adopted the uptempo and unmoored 360-degree style he still employs today — the real world once gave him something of a leg to stand on. When it comes to the (even more) heightened likes of his later Jennifer Lawrence collaborations, however, Russell has been responsible for creating the same mess he wanted to clean up, and that invariably leads to a clusterfuck of bad shtick.

So it goes with “Amsterdam,” which swaps out Lawrence for the equally game Margot Robbie and surrounds her with a dozen more of today’s biggest stars but otherwise continues the director’s recent trend of trying (and failing) to pan for truth amid the whitewater rapids of his own bullshit.

“A lot of this really happened,” promises the movie’s pained smile of an opening title card (what hath Adam McKay wrought?), which proves to be a characteristically misleading introduction from a filmmaker who can no longer tell the difference between truth and artifice. It also proves to be a perverse setup for a story that starts with Christian Bale playing someone who clearly never existed. No one on Earth will come away from “Amsterdam” wondering if Dr. Burt Berendsen — a kind and kooky one-eyed WWI vet whose rumpled optimism and frizzy shock of brown hair make it seem like he wandered off of a Coen brothers set — was an actual person. Willy Wonka was a more believable human being.

Less obviously invented is Burt’s best friend, former war buddy, and forever straight man Harold Woodman, Esq. ( John David Washington ), who summons Burt to a Manhattan funeral parlor one day in 1933. It seems the magnanimous general who created Burt and Harold’s mixed-race army regiment has been murdered, and his daughter — played by Taylor Swift , who acquits herself with aplomb in a brief appearance that will survive in meme-form long after the rest of this movie has been forgotten — would like our trusted heroes to perform the autopsy.

Chris Rock is also there for some reason, inhabiting perhaps the most flagrantly “there for some reason” role in a film that features stiff competition from Michael Shannon and Mike Myers as a pair of goofy spies, Ed Begley Jr. as a corpse, ex-New York Ranger Sean Avery as a random soldier, and Matthias Schoenaerts as a hulking detective (at least Alessandro Nivola, who plays Schoenaerts’ weaselly partner, finds a wide array of funny reasons to be there every time he appears on screen).

The general’s killing will turn out to be the first domino in a cryptocratic plot to overthrow the American government and replace it with a puppet dictator controlled by a cabal of racist business tycoons — hence our history books remembering it as “The Business Plot” before the same methods were formerly rebranded as the “Republican Agenda.” But “Amsterdam” can’t fully embrace its fate as the interwar “American Hustle” until it walks us through some major backstory, and so we’re off to 1918, where Burt and Harold find themselves under the loving care of a sweetly deranged nurse named Valerie Voze (Robbie, serving up a well-adjusted version of Harley Quinn) after sustaining injuries on the frontlines.

Valerie and Harold fall in love, which works for Burt because his senseless heart belongs to the WASPy nightmare of a wife he left back home (Andrea Riseborough), and the three of them decamp to Amsterdam for an edenic slice of bohemia and the best years of their lives. Alas, it’s only a matter of time before reality intervenes and the trio is split apart, a separation made all the more unfortunate because this movie actually has a nice little kick to it during the brief stretches when its blissful triumvirate is left to swan around the dream life they share together.

These characters are destined to reunite more than a decade later when it’s revealed that Valerie — who has some backstory of her own — was the one who suggested Burt and Harold for the general’s autopsy, but little of the old magic follows them home. What scant traces of it remain aren’t enough to buoy a convoluted yet all too simple conspiracy saga that’s all business and no product.

Some mysterious proto-Nazi types, mostly represented by Timothy Olyphant’s mustached Tarim Milfax, are trying to install the very uninterested General Gil Dillenbeck (a very uninterested Robert De Niro) into the White House, and maybe sterilize America’s Black population at the same time, although that subplot gets weirdly minimized for something so sinister. Despite the bulging size of Russell’s cast — I haven’t even mentioned that Anya Taylor-Joy does a rather marvelous turn as Valerie’s aloof sister, that Rami Malek gawks through a couple of scenes as her rich husband, or that Zoe Saldaña plays Burt’s autopsy nurse crush with a hard-edged appeal that screams for a better movie — there are only a small handful of plausible suspects who could be masterminding the conspiracy, the details of which are even more undercooked here than they seem to have been in real life.

And the only thing that could foil their evil plan and prove that love will triumph over hatred in the end? An interracial throuple.

That “Amsterdam” manages to run for 134 minutes without slowing down — despite its wanton disarray of a plot — should be interpreted as a mild warning. Russell squeezes a lot mileage from the notion that Burt and Harold are suspects in the general’s murder, but it never feels like either of them is in the least bit of danger. Most of the film is spent on scenes that feature 10 gallons of dialogue poured into story beats the size of a thimble, an orgiastic flurry of self-amused reaction shots, and a rotating voiceover track that’s passed between the characters as if at random (drink every time Bale says that he “followed the wrong god home” and you might just be lucky enough to pass out before Mike Myers’ whole bit about cuckoo birds). At times, that strategy can make it feel as though Burt, Harold, and Vera share the same thoughts; more often, it just feels as though they share the same writer.

So far as Russell is concerned, that may be more of a feature than a bug. For him, anything is permissible in the pursuit of a certain madcap vibration — a harmonistic singularity that suggests everything is connected. His supercollider-like films strive to reveal that molecular togetherness by spinning so fast that they eventually blur into focus, and they tend to work best during the stretches when raw energy is being catalyzed into action (or vice-versa).

If “Amsterdam” ultimately arrives at some very simple conclusions about the power of love and the operatic ring cycle of history repeating, it at least manages to stay in Russell’s favorite zone for longer (and in more likable fashion) than several of his previous films. However dissonant it might be for a David O. Russell character to preach the virtues of protecting kindness, there’s an undeniable spark that bonds Burt, Harold, and Vera together — a bond that seems to grow stronger as the movie goes on because of how it weathers the nonsense around it.

As with any interwar story about the power of friendship, “Amsterdam” knows that its victories will be pyrrhic in nature, but if history repeats itself, that means our hopes for a better future can repeat themselves too. “Do me a favor,” Burt asks: “Try to be optimistic.” Of course, optimism is the easy part in a movie like this. It’s entertainment that proves elusive.

20th Century Studios will release “Amsterdam” in theaters on Friday, October 7.

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'Amsterdam' review: The stars do not shine

I did my best to like “Amsterdam.” There was not a single other movie this fall that I was more excited to see. Director David O. Russell’s films “Silver Linings Playbook” (2012) and “American Hustle” (2013) are among the first, if not the first, that come to mind when I think of the excellent kinds of true-to-life dramas and entertaining ensemble films that are no longer being made. But I couldn’t succeed in liking “Amsterdam,” his star-studded tragicomic adventure, which will recall “American Hustle,” only if you saw that film in the haze of a multitude of ill-advisedly mixed substances.  

What, precisely, is “Amsterdam” about? Even that simple question eluded me. We open under the narration of Burt Berendsen — Christian Bale in a New York Jewish accent — a doctor running a practice for American veterans of the First World War who have suffered from facial disfigurement (Berendsen himself lost his right eye). The first half-hour of the film is certainly its best, with some novel situations and fairly sharp character development, and there are only hints of the ineptitude of thematic exploration and basic filmmaking technique that plague the rest of the film. Berendsen is best mates with an attorney, Harold Woodman (John David Washington), a successful black man in 1930s New York — and thus a source of belabored curiosity throughout the movie — who served with Burt in an integrated regiment in the Argonne Forest. Washington’s performance is nearly as flat as in “Tenet,” when his character’s name was The Protagonist. Nevertheless, their friendship is the most plausible relationship in a story which otherwise requires you not just to suspend, but to expel, your disbelief. 

After a muddled attempt to introduce the film’s real plot, which involves the suspicious death of the men’s former regiment leader, we are catapulted back in time to their war experiences, the relevance of which is not immediately apparent. Berendsen appears, a successful Park Avenue doctor who seems to be at the front because his in-laws want to get rid of him and is evidently the first white man to treat Woodman and his friends (including a character played by Chris Rock who elicits precisely zero laughs over the course of the movie) with dignity and respect. Their pact is strengthened by horrific suffering in battle — there are no war scenes in the film, but the level of gore in the medical tent is gruesome and gratuitous — and they soon add a third to their powerful friendship, a nurse named Valerie (Margot Robbie) who patches them up with éclat while briefly mangling a French accent before it is revealed, mercifully, that her character is not actually French, but an American in disguise. Woodman and Valerie quickly fall in love, and the three hightail it to Amsterdam, so that, apparently, Berendsen can get a glass eye (“dark hazel green”) and they can live in a studio together where they sing nonsensical songs and Valerie makes art that would leave even Gertrude Stein scratching her head. This is their moment of shared bliss, with the war finally over, ignorant of future hardship.  Russell wants for this to be the emotional heart of the film — the place and time in these characters’ lives when they loved life — but, unfortunately, he only gives us five or so minutes of it before the happy times end abruptly and we are jolted back to the 1930s with the Depression in full force and war on the horizon. We’ll always have Paris, but instead, it’s Amsterdam. Whoop-de-do.  

Just how did this movie go wrong, when it has as great a cast as can be gathered? "Amsterdam” boasts some of the worst performances by some of the best actors alive today, but it’s hard to blame them, and I do not believe their poor performances to be even primarily their fault. For one thing, “Amsterdam” desperately wants to be a continuation of the genre of true-crime comedic films that have been so popular in recent years, the greatest exponent of which was, arguably, “American Hustle.” But it has quite obviously missed the boat on this and is left looking like a behind-the-times straggler. Starting with a title card that says, “A lot of this really happened,” and flashing yellow-text titles to introduce certain characters in freeze frames, the movie is replete with overdue tropes that practically caused me to grimace in the theater. Russell may have started the success of this vague genre with “American Hustle,” but with “Amsterdam,” he has buried it.  

Another fault is that Russell is so in love with his characters and story (the script is his solo effort in addition to directing) that the film as a whole is sorely lacking in exacting editorial diligence. Certain moments are mouth-puckeringly maudlin and entire scenes are simply confusing in their execution. Lines will initially appear to be benign and saccharine aphorisms, such as the refrain “you choose someone or you need someone,” a shared phrase which is supposed to underpin the perplexing romance between Bale and Andrea Riseborough’s character, but eventually I was just left with the plain realization that, as sweet as that sounds, it is so platitudinous that it doesn’t even mean anything .  

The script is plotted so ploddingly that the film is alternately mundane and absurdly action-packed. The development of the plot is such that when scenes begin it is entirely obvious that all that will be relevant in the ensuing dialogue are two words, a first and a last name (Paul Canterbury! Tom Voze! Gil Dillenbeck!) which will then lead to another scene in which we learn another name, and so on until, presumably, one or more of those names turn out to be the baddies in the film. There is a grand legacy of this style of screenwriting being excellent (in Hitchcock thrillers like “North by Northwest” and classic journalism films like “All the President’s Men,” for instance) but "Amsterdam” is hardly a work of literary merit, and feels so far from the elating and beguiling feeling of natural discovery that permeated those brilliantly written films.  

There were many groan-worthy lines. I couldn’t wrap my head around Rami Malek’s character, Tom Voze, calling Ed Begley Jr.’s character, Bill Meekins, a “graham cracker of a man.” Is that an attempt at humor? 1930s poetry? An elaborate metaphor in which Bale and Washington— the soldiers who depended on him for stability—are the melted chocolate and marshmallow? How deeply was I supposed to consider this line? Was it supposed to distract me from the chaotic convergence of characters and disparate plot elements in the scene? When Leia called Han a “scruffy-looking nerf herder” I immediately got why he was so affronted. There was no lingering puzzlement to prevent me from turning my attention to Darth Vader, as he marched into the Rebel base on Hoth. Indeed, Malek’s character was one of the more appallingly laughable — essentially the equally twisted younger brother of his “No Time to Die” villain —who is also supposed to be Margot Robbie’s brother, whom he resembles about as much as, well, a graham cracker. Like so many of the other superb actors in the movie, his performance is suffocated by implausibility. 

There’s not even anything Christian Bale, who, extraordinarily, is simply fine , can do to rescue the film, and whether his screen partner is Robert De Niro or Taylor Swift (because, good grief, both are in the film) it is beyond his powers to save. Taylor Swift pops up at the movie’s beginning, a femme who’s fatale only to herself, surviving only to sing a brief ditty, order a cheesecake at a diner and be swiftly pushed under a truck. Robert De Niro appears much later, with an appropriate buildup that caused me to get my hopes up that he would bring the film to a relatively smooth landing or at least knock some sense into it with a one-two Jake LaMotta punch. Those hopes were dashed, unfortunately. At a speech, an attempt is made on the life of Robert De Niro’s character, a prominent general named Gil Dillenbeck. The gunman’s shot misses, instead hitting a glass of water on Dillenbeck’s lectern. Dillenbeck doesn’t even glance over to react: “Whoever shot that is a coward,” he says. I laughed aloud. All I could presume was that after being shot in the face on live television in “Joker” (2019), De Niro now has a sixth sense about these sorts of situations.  

I take no pleasure in coming away so unsatisfied from this film. I honestly believe that there is enough in “Amsterdam” to make a compelling, funny, and heartwarming movie. There are flashes of that potential throughout. But what was made is a total mess. And it’s harder to defend Russell’s well-documented psychotic behavior on sets when the result of his demands is a failure, but that’s a conversation for another day. 

David O. Russell has said that he likes for his films to be about outsiders, and his characters in “Amsterdam,” even though lost in a sea of cinematic chaos as they are, are still mildly endearing for this fact. I just hoped that I would actually love them, like Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence in “Silver Linings Playbook,” or Christian Bale in “American Hustle.” And still, even with how disappointed I was by this film, it is quite heartening to see stars assemble in these numbers for purposes other than Avenging. The abysmal box office performance of “Amsterdam” will make it harder for original studio films with great casts to be made. So even though “Amsterdam” is a failure, it had admirable ambition and a pluckily original story, and if that is what is being set out for, I’m prepared to sit through more failures like it until someone (whether that will be David O. Russell remains to be seen) succeeds in making one of these kinds of movies again. 

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Amsterdam review: An exhausting, overlong conspiracy thriller

Amsterdam could have been forgiven for being a lot of things, but dull is not one of them. The new film from writer-director David O. Russell boasts one of the most impressive ensemble casts of the year and is photographed by Emmanuel Lubezki, one of Hollywood’s premier cinematographers. Beyond that, its kooky premise and even wackier cast of characters open the door for Amsterdam to be the kind of screwball murder mystery that O. Russell, at the very least, seems uniquely well-equipped to make.

Instead, Amsterdam is a disaster of the highest order. It’s a film made up of so many disparate, incongruent parts that it becomes clear very early on in its 134-minute runtime that no one involved — O. Russell most of all — really knew what it is they were making. It is a misfire of epic proportions, a comedic conspiracy thriller that is written like a haphazard screwball comedy but paced like a meandering detective drama. Every element seems to be at odds with another, resulting in a film that is rarely funny but consistently irritating.

As its exposition-laden opening narration establishes, Amsterdam follows Dr. Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale), a doctor and war veteran who has grown used to living every day with a glass eye and back brace. Forever changed by his experience fighting in World War I, Burt has taken it upon himself to try to single-handedly care for all of the other wounded vets who have been left behind by the elites of early 1930s New York City. Unfortunately for him, it’s this philanthropic instinct that leads Burt into agreeing to conduct a covert autopsy on the body of his former commanding officer.

When Burt discovers that the man in question was, indeed, poisoned, he is forced to team back up with two of his WWI companions, a lawyer named Harold Woodsman (John David Washington) and Valerie Voze (Margot Robbie), the former combat nurse who saved Burt and Harold’s lives when they were injured in the war. Before long, Burt, Harold, and Valerie all find themselves caught up in a conspiracy involving several powerful businessmen, a celebrated American general (played by Robert De Niro), and the authoritarian political wave that’s simultaneously sweeping through Europe.

If that all sounds a bit messy and convoluted, that’s because it is. However, while Amsterdam ’s premise is loosely based on an obscure American political conspiracy known as the Business Plot , the film fails to coherently adapt its real-life story for the big screen. O. Russell’s attempts to stress the contemporary relevance of the Business Plot itself never come across as anything more than ham-fisted and hackneyed, either, and that’s especially true by the time that Amsterdam tosses out a lazy and obvious visual joke in its third act about the secretly fascistic design of one character’s hedges.

Amsterdam also saddles most of its cast members with some of the most inauthentic and cloying dialogue you’ll likely hear this year. Zoe Saldaña, for instance, is utterly wasted in a thankless role that would rather her espouse empty platitudes about the nature of love than contribute anything of real substance to Amsterdam ’s story. O. Russell’s script, meanwhile, buries Robbie, Washington, and Bale’s natural charisma beneath superfluous layers of eccentricities that add little to their characters, and the love story that binds Harold, Burt, and Valerie together is so thinly sketched and saccharine that it ultimately rings false.

There are a few performers who do manage to make the most out of O. Russell’s screwball swings — namely, Michael Shannon, Mike Myers, Alessandro Nivola, and Andrea Riseborough. Anya Taylor-Joy also makes an admirable attempt at bringing her obnoxiously narcissistic character to life in as satirical a way as possible, but the heightened aspects of her performance are drowned out by both O. Russell’s frequently odd editing choices and the sleepy performance that Rami Malek gives as her on-screen partner, Tom.

For his part, Lubezki’s cinematography imbues Amsterdam with a kind of warmth and sensitivity that its dramatically inert script lacks. Lubezki’s meditative, Malick-esque visual style does often seem to be at odds with O. Russell’s frenetic sense of humor, though, which only makes the disconnect between the way Amsterdam is written and the way it was brought to life that much more apparent. While J.R. Hawbaker and Albert Wolsky’s costumes only further reinforce Amsterdam ’s needlessly quirky style as well, the duo do manage to clothe the film’s stars in a number of memorable outfits. (This writer was particularly fond of the top hat-centric look Robbie rocks in  Amsterdam ‘s second act.)

The film’s visual achievements are not enough to rescue Amsterdam . The film is a creative and directorial miss that feels doomed from its tedious opening moments all the way to its emotionally hollow final frames. What could have been a messy but, at the very least, delightfully exuberant 90-minute conspiracy comedy has been rendered as a 135-minute wannabe prestige production. Every line of dialogue sounds like it was intended to be thrown out like a fastball but was instead read at half-speed, which leaves many of Amsterdam ’s scenes with the kind of dead pauses that only grind its momentum to an even greater halt.

Between this, Joy , and American Hustle , it seems safe to say that whatever goodwill O. Russell had accrued with The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook has since dried up. Much like the poisoned veteran at the center of its story, Amsterdam is simply dead on arrival.

Amsterdam is now playing in theaters.

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Review: David O. Russell’s ‘Amsterdam’ Is An All-Star Delight

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Amsterdam IMAX poster

Amsterdam (2022)

New Regency/rated R/134 minutes/$80 million

Written and directed by David O. Russell

Starring Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Chris Rock, Anya-Taylor Joy, Zoe Saldana, Mike Myers, Michael Shannon, Timothy Olyphant, Andrea Riseborough, Taylor Swift, Matthias Schoenaerts, Alessandro Nivola, Rami Malek and Robert De Niro

Cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki

Edited by Jay Cassidy

Music by Daniel Pemberton

Opening theatrically courtesy of Walt Disney DIS on October 7

David O. Russell’s Amsterdam is a surprise delight, both in terms of a filmmaker whose star-studded concoctions generally leave me cold and in terms of the kind of ‘just a movie’ Hollywood popcorn flick that used to be the industry’s bread and butter. It is, commercial hopes and awards season potential be damned, an $80 million dramedy filled with game movie stars (Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, etc.) relishing the chance to tear into a big movie about important past = prologue subject matter that isn’t a franchise flick or stuffy year-end melodrama. It is light on its feet as it loosely retells a critical but mostly forgotten chapter of American history. It’s too long, and the third act becomes painfully redundant, but it mostly excels as a top-flight studio programmer.

Opening theatrically this Thursday evening, 20th Century Studios’ Amsterdam takes off with the momentum of a speeding bullet, plunging us into the lives of Dr. Burt Berendsen (Bale) and Harold Woodman (Washington). Both are World War I vets; the good doctor lost an eye in combat while his lifelong pal had to fight in a French uniform since the American forces remained unintegrated. Right now, Woodman is a lawyer while Berendsen fixes the disfigured faces of fellow veterans (while high on experimental painkillers), and an opportunity for a high-paying gig comes in the form of an autopsy request from the daughter (Taylor Swift) of a deceased U.S. senator. Things take a turn, our pals find themselves on the run, and the film dives back into the past to bring us up to speed.

(L-R): John David Washington as Harold, Christian Bale as Burt, and JMargot Robbie as Valerie in 20th Century Studios' AMSTERDAM. Photo by Merie Weismiller. © 2022 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

The film never really regains the super-charged momentum of those first twenty minutes, even if it’s clear that O. Russell would rather take his time with these characters and this world. The prologue perhaps sets false impressions about how the rest of the film will unfold. This isn’t a thrill-a-minute mystery but a lazy river movie (think, offhand, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood ). The pleasures are rooted in strong production values, a terrific ensemble cast (including a career-best Margot Robbie performance as a quirky, sympathetic wartime nurse who becomes a lifelong friend) delivering some top-shelf work. The characters remain the focus even as the slow-building plot evolves from simple whodunnit to global conspiracy. Not unlike American Hustle , Amsterdam concerns a few relative nobodies who find themselves becoming crucial figures in American history, which is partially the point.

Robbie pops in when the film flashes back to wartime, as Valorie Voze treats both wounded warriors and helps them hightail it to Amsterdam for a period of post-war nirvana. Valerie and Harold take a liking to each other, which makes sense since Robbie and Washington are both charismatic and drop-dead gorgeous performers. At the same time, Burt yearns for the approval of his wife (Andrea Riseborough) and her wealthy family. The film initially coasts on its character-specific pleasures. The plot kicks back in when the duo gets mixed up in a present-tense (early 1930s) murder. If you don’t know the history, you don’t need any more. The slow-building peril eventually concerns Robert De Niro as an esteemed Major General and various quirky characters played by Zoe Saldana, Chris Rock, Rami Malek, Anya-Taylor Joy, Michael Shannon and Mike Myers.

(L-R): John David Washington as Harold, Margot Robbie as Valerie, Rami Malek as Tom, and Anya Taylor-Joy as Libby in 20th Century Studios' AMSTERDAM. Photo by Merie Weismiller Wallace; SMPSP. © 2022 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

Amsterdam is a rollicking good time with good company amid Judy Decker’s scrumptious period piece production design. It’s a reminder of how big a Hollywood movie can look and feel when it has a big budget that isn’t mostly taken up with fx-driven spectacle, even if its budget would have made it commercially perilous in 2012, let alone 2022. Emmanuel Lubezki lends prestige and gravitas to the comic farce, while the film excels above all as an acting treat. It’s a blast watching some of today’s best and brightest flourish under one of the last directors who can still get this kind of movie made for this kind of budget in Hollywood. The film is unquestionably important without drowning in its present-tense relevance, excelling as an old-school, adult-skewing entertainment. Warts and all, I kind of loved it.

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David O Russell’s Marmite-y, messily-plotted tale of friendship and conspiracy is all outsized performances and good vibes

Time Out says

American Hustle director David O Russell’s breezy period caper is not, by any traditional metric, A Great Movie. The plot is bananas, despite being loosely based on a real-life fascist conspiracy in 1930s America, the ending is a dud and the outsized performances won’t be for everyone. And I kinda liked it. Because what Amsterdam lacks in tight storytelling, it more than makes up for in exuberant, happy-go-lucky spirit. It’s the kind of whole-hearted celebration of goofy camaraderie and friendship of which there are all too few on our cinema screens. And for all its flaws, it leaves you feeling better about the world.   That baggy plot involves three old Great War friends caught up a byzantine scheme to instal a Nazi-sympathising government in Washington. It begins with a postmortem and takes in Great War veterans’ leagues, a couple of ornithologically fixated spies (Mike Myers and Michael Shannon), more murders, two dimbulb cops (Alessandro Nivola and Matthias Schoenaerts) and Rami Malek’s slippery one-percenter. It’s, well, a lot. Amsterdam ’s well-stocked ensemble inhabits its lushly constructed and lit Jazz Age world ( Gravity ’s Emmanuel Lubezki is cinematographer) with gusto. Christian Bale delivers a joyously leftfield performance as a caring, glass-eyed Jewish doctor struggling to win the approval of the snobbish Park Avenue family of his wife (Andrea Riseborough). To say he goes ‘full Columbo’ is very much meant as a compliment. 

What   Amsterdam   lacks in tight storytelling, it more than makes up for in exuberant, happy-go-lucky spirit

Alongside Margot Robbie’s sparky nurse/artist and John David Washington’s level-headed lawyer, he’s the heart of the movie. Diving back to 1918, the threesome are a tight-knit posse of war veterans – her, a nurse; the other two, wounded soldiers – who seek a bohemian post-war life in Amsterdam. Fast forward a decade or so, and they’re reunited in New York and wanted for the murder of a general’s daughter. They’ve been stitched up, but by who?  Cramming Amsterdam ’s myriad subplots and political angles into a coherent two hours ultimately proves beyond Russell. But tight narrative isn’t really what fuels the writer-director. He’s more about arming electric performers with offbeat, talky scenes and catching the lightning that sparks in a bottle. And the bottle here is full to the brim. In cinemas worldwide now .

Cast and crew

• Director: David O Russell
• Screenwriter: David O Russell
• Taylor Swift
• Christian Bale
• John David Washington
• Margot Robbie
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Critic’s Pick

‘Strange Darling’ Review: Assume Nothing

In this cheeky, cunningly assembled thriller, a serial killer gets a satisfying and surprising comeuppance.

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By Jeannette Catsoulis

A movie that’s best experienced stone cold, “Strange Darling” is so dependent on its surprises — one head-snapping twist, with several judiciously spaced lesser shocks — that to reveal any one of them would be critical malpractice.

A crawling onscreen text, read by Jason Patric, informs us that what we are about to see is the dramatization of a spree killer’s final, vicious acts. Thus primed, we’re thrown into the middle of a frantic car chase as a terrified young woman in scarlet scrubs races to escape a shotgun-wielding man in a pickup truck. She is known only as The Lady (Willa Fitzgerald), and she is bleeding from a head wound; he is The Demon (Kyle Gallner), his sleazy mustache and snorts of cocaine familiar bad-guy signifiers. We’ve got this, we think, settling in for some serial-killer comfort viewing. We could not be more wrong.

Playing out in six, ingeniously scrambled chapters, this headlong thriller transforms a simple cat-and-mouse premise — and maybe even a toxic love story — into an impertinent rebuke to genre clichés and our own preprogrammed assumptions. Flexing back and forth in time, the writer and director, JT Mollner, bets the house on a mechanism that repeatedly asks us to reassess what has gone before. Cunning as it is, structure is not the movie’s sole strength. Both Z Berg’s haunting, otherworldly pop songs and Giovanni Ribisi’s eloquent photography (it’s the actor’s first stint as a feature cinematographer) bathe the film’s violence in an unexpected dreaminess. In one pivotal scene, shot with shadowy intensity, flirtation and threat alternate so frequently that the flickering power dynamics are completely destabilizing.

Less complicated by far are Ed Begley, Jr. and Barbara Hershey as a pair of doomsday preppers who think the bleeding woman at their door has been attacked by a Sasquatch. They will soon learn that there are some problems even bear spray can’t solve.

Strange Darling Rated R for cutting, ketamine and lots of killing. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes. In theaters.

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Movie Reviews

NEW YORK (OSV News) – Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan can be credited with a certain degree of originality in the crafting of his thriller “Trap.” And, though the film as a whole turns out to be an odd mix of interesting plot twists and yawning improbabilities, there’s little on screen that would bar older teens from reaching into this cinematic grab bag.

Can a brutal serial killer successfully double as a suburban family man? As far as seemingly devoted dad Cooper (Josh Hartnett) is concerned, the answer is yes. Among those buying into his act is his typical-teen daughter, Riley (Ariel Donoghue).

To reward Riley for an outstanding report card, Cooper brings her to a concert by her favorite pop star, Lady Raven (Saleka Night Shyamalan). As Riley enthuses over the music, Cooper notices that an unusual number of police officers seem to be present at the event.

He eventually discovers that the authorities, led by profiler Dr. Josephine Grant (Hayley Mills), had obtained a clue indicating he would be there and now have him completely surrounded. Time for some quick thinking.

Is the idea that a psychopath could carry on healthy loving relationships such as Cooper has with Riley, his wife Rachel (Alison Pill) and his young son Logan (Lochlan Miller) intriguing or merely absurd? Certainly the origin story of Cooper’s madness – he’s haunted by visions of his overbearing mother (Marcia Bennett) — is straight out of Freud’s bargain basement.

So the proceedings come across as more than a bit muddled. And the concert scenes go on too long as well. But the action is restrained, objectionable elements are few and, to the extent that any message is conveyed, it’s that decent people can be almost as resourceful as a homicidal maniac.

The film contains mature themes, brief harsh violence, a few gory images, a couple of instances each of profanity and crass talk, numerous milder oaths and a single rough term. The OSV News classification is A-III — adults. The Motion Picture Association rating is PG-13 — parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

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