Hustlers

HUSTLERS - STX Entertainment

Hustlers - directed by Lorene Scafaria - follows Destiny (Constance Wu), a stripper on the breadline who, in the face of poverty, begins a friendship with Ramona (Jennifer Lopez). They stick together to survive, but when the financial crash begins to strangle their income, plans to hustle their clients for thousands of dollars begin. It’s a hustle that grows into something far more significant and far more dangerous than the two could have expected.

Comparisons to the work of Scorsese have come in thick and fast, but if anything, Scafaria's crime drama is not too dissimilar to Craig Gillespie's Academy Award-winning I, Tonya. Structurally speaking, it is almost verbatim: a non-linear narrative exercised through a reporter interviewing the subject recounting the events that set the story in motion. None of the cast members of Hustlers can reach the heights of Margot Robbie's performance as Tonya Harding, however, Jennifer Lopez comes shockingly close.

Lopez is a powerhouse as Ramona, a character that is full of personality, richness and colourful exploits that energize the film every time she is introduced on screen. Ramona has an interesting arc and Lopez causes a storm on screen, but the film never really wants to touch upon anything under the surface causing the emotional depth to be shockingly absent. The film only slightly touches upon Constance Wu’s characters struggle with her grandma and daughter creating elements that lead to a larger vital arc; unfortunately, the scenes are shockingly underwritten and exploited. Wu also has a slight struggle to showcase any charisma. Most of her delivery is one-note, and the emotional intensity and mobility she brings are lacklustre throughout, especially when the central core of the film is to follow the trajectory of her character.

The supporting cast is equally as frustrating and lacking when it came to the writing. Small cameos from pop sensations Cardi B and Lizzo cheat the audience more than they add any form of substance to the overall proceedings, even if the stars both light the screen up when utilised. Keke Palmer and Lili Reinhart as Mercedes and Annabelle are two massively wasted opportunities to explore the troubling and life-affirming effects of their career choices and home life respectively. The trouble in the two characters lives is dangled in front of the audience but never traversed. With every small scene that adds an inch of depth to their lives, the film would rather cut back to a scene that either adds upon the excessiveness of the plot or regurgitated scenes to reaffirm the already promoted characters arcs.

The structure that worked wonders in I, Tonya does not quite hit the same heights when utilized in Hustlers. The reason such a convention is executed brilliantly in Gillespie's film is the quite clear dissonance between where the characters start and where they end. They have a clear visual and physical arc that the audience becomes enticed into seeing how they develop — namely their trajectory on how the events have affected them. Hustlers does not have that same compelling notion because of the lacking finality the characters present; the consequences of the actions of the characters are never fully explored or even slightly acknowledged. Thus, all the film is interested in exploring is the crimes of the characters in a glitzy and somewhat problematic manner, an element that leads the film to a hollowness it can not escape.

It is not necessarily a negative to showcase the heightened excitement of the illegal activity. One would only have to watch any crime drama to understand that a film can entertain the audience with characters that indulge in grievous behaviour. That being said, the film also has to establish a consequence for their actions, otherwise the morality of the film is thrown off and the audience is left with a benign feeling of moral ambiguity.

Hustlers throughout only seems to be compelled to showcase the need to explore glitz, glamour, excess and criminality without an extent of thought-provoking analysis as to why these characters did what they did. Not only is it a poor character study in that regard but feels quite exploitative over the true story. A story that not only had victims, but also perpetrators who committed these crimes in far bigger terms than just wanting a Rolex or Chevrolet.

Hustlers is released worldwide on September 13th, 2019.