***Damn The Government Man-Amy Adams’ American Hustle  

 

DVD

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

American Hustle, starring Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, 2013  

The first rule of scamming, learned early on in the old neighborhood where scam-artists had a certain élan and were held in high regard by we corner boys, was to keep it simple. Second rule was to keep far, far, far away from anything that might attract the authorities’ interest. That is a lesson that the two hustlers, Irving and Sydney (played by Christian Bale and Amy Adams respectively), in the film under review, American Hustle, emphatically did not do. And while in the end they did not take the big tumble they certainly cost themselves plenty of respect in the eyes of those old time corner boys from the old neighborhood by “working” with the Feds (especially their “handler” played by Bradley Cooper.     

Here is how things went off the rails for this pair of middle-level scammers. They were working an old loan scam (shades of Bernie Madoff maybe) and got caught in the Feds radar. Of course with the provocatively-clothed Amy Adams leading the marks in the scam worked well for a while, a long while. To get out from under the Feds, really get out from under the grasp of their handler, Cooper, they needed to “give up” some important figures, government and business figures involved in the casino building business in Jersey. But the minute you talk casinos, the minute you talk New Jersey, that is the minute you are talking the “connected” guys and connected guys don’t like to be hustled. Don’t like to be hustled some much that guys who try such tricks wind up “sleeping with the fishes” as a character famously said in The Godfather. So Irving and Sydney decide to turn things around and hustle their way out of their problems. And they more or less do, putting poor old Cooper on the spot, although it was a close thing with those connected guys.