Hustlers

“This city, this whole country, is a strip club. You’ve got people tossing the money, and people doing the dance.”

Filmology Rating: 3 out of 4

Hustlers was directed by Lorene Scafaria and stars Constance Wu, of last year's 'Crazy Rich Asians', and Jennifer Lopez.

Destiny (Wu) is working as a stripper in the mid-2000s. She befriends a fellow stripper, Ramona (Lopez), who is well-versed in the stripper world. Ramona takes a broke and struggling Destiny under her wing. The economic crisis of 2008 forces Destiny and Ramona to "hustle." Prior to, this film did look dreadful. The trailers gave it a similar pastiche of 'Bad Mom's Christmas' and I wished not to relive that experience. However, I was pleasantly surprised this was not a "gimmick" centered film. 

Usually in a film like this, a studio or even filmmaker, banks on a gimmick and this film's gimmick is watch Jennifer Lopez and other girls like Cardi B strip. However, that is not this film.  This film is Scorsese meets 'Magic Mike.' However, it's not quite on the tier of either. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this film tells a story. 

Scafaria does an excellent job at making you sympathize with strippers that are doing criminal acts. This film pins "the Wall Street guy" against a wall and has them act as a dart board for these handful of strippers to steal from. 

I was utterly shocked to find Jennifer Lopez delivering a terrific performance. It's not just a physical one, but a very difficult one, emotionally. She plays the type of girl who's very friendly on the outside, but ice cold on the inside when it comes to morals. The Oscar cannon has been fired and Lopez may be nominated. We'll see. 

Constance Wu does a great job as the audience's way into the story. She is the protagonist, but at a point, it feels like the film forgets about her journey and focuses on the group more than her as an individual. 

The second act is very choppy and repetitive. This entire film is like the female Scorsese. It's 'Goodfellas', 'Casino', but 'Hustlers' goes to show how brilliant of a filmmaker Scorsese really is and how difficult it is to replicate his kind of storytelling. 

I found 'Hustlers' to be a very solid, truth-inspired narrative, that just misses too many emotional beats.

Rating: See It

-Nolan