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As another award season begins, now is the time when the usual cast of award contending directors start coming out of the woodwork to release their latest award hopefuls. But while many of these directors have a very distinct style, with Amsterdam, David O. Russell seems to be trying out some other directors’ styles.
Amsterdam finds old war buddies Burt and Harold (Christian Bale and John David Washington) in a dangerous position after they’re framed for the murder of their beloved general’s daughter. As they try to find the killer and clear their names, they end up reconnecting with their dear friend, Valerie (Margot Robbie), who nursed them back to health after the war—and whose family has some important connections in political circles. But their search for answers leads them to uncover some disturbing information that some powerful people want to keep quiet.
As Burt and Harold attempt to get justice for their general and his daughter, their adventure starts out as wacky and whimsical in a Wes Anderson kind of way. The quirky characters explore love and art in their time in Amsterdam after the First World War—with Christian Bale wildly overplaying his half-Jewish pill-popping doctor, Margot Robbie playing her own version of a lovable post-war manic pixie dream girl, and John David Washington’s charmingly bland Harold getting lost in the craziness. But the whimsy of it all eventually just fades away as the trio digs deeper into the murder mystery, uncovering things that they didn’t really want to uncover. The story, meanwhile, grows excessively complex, adding more characters and more subplots to the mix—mostly, as far as I can tell, for the purpose of adding more cameos.
The result, then, is a film that just doesn’t know what it wants to be. At times, it’s oddly whimsical, but it also attempts to tackle some serious topics, offering some heavy-handed (and not at all whimsical) warnings about our present-day situation. Had Russell stuck with telling the story in a more straightforward manner, he may have done a better job of getting his point across. But the serious side and the playful side just don’t mix well, making it feel incredibly awkward.
Part post-war caper, part murder mystery, part historical lecture, Amsterdam does have some interesting moments—along with plenty of cameos. But its uneven storytelling and its lack of a strong identity makes it a messy award season entry from a filmmaker who seems to have lost his voice.
You can join in the caper by tracking down Amsterdam in theaters beginning on October 7, 2022.
Listen to the review on Reel Discovery:
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