The Fabelmans

It's good.

Tar

It's good.

Amsterdam

David O. Russell has demonstrated an ability to weave different genres together into mostly satisfying movies. Drama, comedy, and romance, for instance, flowed together charmingly in Silver Linings Playbook, spotlighting another one of his talents: eliciting fine performances out of his actors. Russell extracted humor and drama out of his black comedy crime film, American Hustle, one of his better efforts. Seven years after his last feature, Joy, he returns with the hugely ambitious Amsterdam. Although Russell works with a top-notch cast and other able contributors (such as cinematographer Emmanuel Lubeski and composer Daniel Pemberton), Amsterdam, his comedy thriller, has no laughs or thrills.

In 1918, Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale) meets Harold Woodsman (John David Washington) in France during World War I. Their wounds are treated by Valerie Vose (Margot Robbie), the creative nurse who cares for them and becomes a boon companion. They move to Amsterdam and enjoy life together. 15 years later, Burt, who lost an eye in the war, returns to New York City, where he has a medical practice. He is still friends with Harold, who has started a romantic relationship with Valerie and has come to the City of Dreams hoping to become a success. Harold, a lawyer, asks Burt to perform an autopsy on Bill Meekins (Ed Begley Jr.), a senator who was a commander in their regiment in the Great War. Meekins’ daughter Elizabeth (Taylor Swift) suspects he has been murdered. Burt quickly realizes Meekins has been poisoned. Burt and Harold meet Elizabeth to discuss Burt’s autopsy findings when she is shoved in front of a moving car. The killer loudly blames Burt and Harold, causing the two men to run from the gathering crowd.

Russell also takes a true event in which a cabal of affluent men tried to overthrow the American government by using a general, Smedley Butler, as a frontman. In the film, Robert De Niro depicts Gil Dillenbeck, an army veteran based on Butler. Russell’s script commingles the real with the fictional (Burt, Harold, and Valerie are made up, as are the killing of the senator and his daughter) to charge the plot. The different strands could be fused together to make an engrossing piece of work. That, however, doesn’t happen.

Russell’s screenplay is a wreck on every level. Burt and Harold seem to be in danger of being chased down after they are accused of killing Elizabeth. But they get away without too much trouble. The police subsequently find them, so they’re thrown in the clink, right? No, they are given days to prove their innocence. That’s not the way a successful movie handles its conflicts. I would like to take readers back to 1993’s The Fugitive. Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford) is arrested, tried, and convicted for murdering his wife, Helen (Sela Ward). He is ordered to serve prison time and he’s supposed to be killed by lethal injection. Those stakes are in the stratosphere. But what if the Chicago police only talked to Richard? What if the police gave him time to prove he didn’t do it? That would be good for the character’s well-being, but horrible for the movie because the stakes have fallen to ground level. There’s no urgency to this part of the plot.

There’s almost no life in the dialogue, either. When Burt and Harold speak to each other, I wanted to care about them. Russell’s script doesn’t often try for humor or offer scenes that allowed me to bond with them. So, I sat staring at the screen, stunned at how unmoving it all is. After a man pours a drink on Paul Canterbury (Mike Myers), an MI6 spy and manufacturer of glass eyes, Paul responds, “Drinks on me…literally.” I smiled and made a mental note that this was one of the very few emotional reactions I’d had to anything in the film. The characters aren’t compelling, a major difficulty because the cast is large. Apart from the three leads, there’s Valerie’s brother Tom Voze (Rami Malek), a comic character who speaks each word with precision. Joy (Anya Taylor) is Tom’s mordant wife. Neither is amusing. Milton King (Chris Rock) pops up at various points, but, while he is an Army pal of Burt and Harold, there’s no necessity for him to be in the movie. Paul Canterbury and Henry Norcross (Michael Shannon) depict intelligence officers and bird lovers. There are others. I was indifferent to all of them.

Russell sees a parallel between the action of moneymen trying to replace a sitting president and our current politics, which has one party devaluing elections, politicians of that same party not admitting defeat when they have lost, and supporters of that same party trying to install a leader who didn’t win the 2020 election. I get Russell’s point and loathe the attempted cheating and denial of reality I’ve seen. I love this country and am a strong advocate for democracy. Still, Amsterdam remains a disaster. Russell should have made Dillenbeck a more substantial character in the first two acts, so when his story takes over in the final third, I would have been drawn into it. He doesn’t, so Dillenbeck’s tale has no impact. The movie is tonally jarring too, with comic characters like Tom and Joy, who have political beliefs so dreadful they made me not want to laugh at them. Valerie creating art out of the soldiers’ shrapnel seems like something out of Wes Anderson. The attempts at humor don’t fit comfortably with a murder mystery and a conspiracy to overthrow the American government. I’ll admit if Russell had found a way make the comedy flow with the more serious parts (like Truffaut did in Shoot the Piano Player), I would applaud him. He doesn’t.

Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubeski infuses the movie with warm colors that evoke nostalgia, and he succeeds. Daniel Pemberton’s cheerful music gives the action a bit of a much-needed boost too. The costumes by J.R. Hawbaker and Albert Wolsky are richly detailed, with Valerie’s gown at the gala being the most impressive. Production designer Judy Becker reanimates 1930s Manhattan with the right amount of luster. The movie contains satisfactory acting jobs, from Robert De Niro’s passionate Gil Dillenbeck to Margot Robbie’s winsome Valerie Vose to Timothy Olyphant’s loudmouthed hitman, Tarim Milfax. Yet, though De Niro and Robbie perform acceptably, they don’t get me emotionally invested in their characters. It’s not their fault; it’s Russell’s for not putting them in a tale that would make their work meaningful. John David Washington, I’m sad to say, gives a humdrum portrayal of Harold Woodsman, lacking in presence and personality.

Just one more thing. It took me a bit of time to suss Christian Bale’s performance as Burt, yet I think I’ve got it. Because Burt and Harold are framed for a killing, Burt investigates who’s behind it. He has only one eye, and his real eye and fake one doesn’t always align. Sometimes, he hunches over as he tries to learn the truth. In a movie released close to Columbus Day, it’s almost as though Bale turns himself into Peter Falk’s Columbo. (Incidentally, in the episode Columbo and the Murder of a Rock Star, Dabney Coleman’s character calls Columbo “Columbus.”) I’ve got to give Bale some credit for trying to add some intriguing characteristics to a man who’s only a little less blandly written by Russell than most others in Amsterdam. But it too often comes off as schtick—to be as satisfying as Bale wanted.