Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Amsterdam’ on HBO Max, David O. Russell’s Silly, Serious and Generally All-Over-the-Place Quasi-Historical Comedy

David O. Russell returns with Amsterdam (now available on HBO Max, but also to rent or own on streaming services like Prime Video), a semi-historical comedy-thriller with a mega-cast that takes gigantic swings and nearly whiffs but ends up being so unlike so many things, you can’t help but like it. The shit-stirring director who had quite a run with The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle – three best director Oscar nods, two screenplay nods – ended a seven-year hiatus in spectacular fashion, casting Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Chris Rock, Anya Taylor-Joy, Rami Malek, Michael Shannon, Mike Myers, Zoe Saldana, Robert De Niro, Timothy Olyphant, Andrea Riseborough and Taylor Swift for a film that crashed and burned at the box office in mighty fashion, losing parent company Disney roughly $100 million. Whoops. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth watching, though.

AMSTERDAM: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: A LOT OF THIS REALLY HAPPENED, reads a title card, and don’t you believe it. Fargo had a similar one, and we all know it was just effing with us. Anyway, NEW YORK, 1933: Burt Berendsen (Bale) and Harold Woodman (Washington) have been tight friends for 15 years. They met in France, fighting in the War to End All Wars, when Burt stood up for Black soldiers who were treated as lesser citizens by their superiors. Burt and Harold caught a lot of shrapnel, and were hauled to the infirmary hand-in-hand, both bleeding profusely. Burt caught the worst of it – lost an eye, significant facial scarring, back torn up, in a back brace for life. A nurse named Valerie (Robbie) pulled trays full of jagged metal from their flesh and turned it into art. The metal, that is – sculpture, textured paintings, stuff like that. They became fast friends and escaped to Amsterdam, where they sang and danced together and Harold and Valerie fell in love.

It’s worth noting that I’m telling this story in a linear fashion because the 1918 stuff is a flashback and it’s just easier this way. Anyway, Burt returned to New York, to resume his career as a doctor and return to his wife Beatrice (Riseborough), a high-society woman whose parents scoff at Burt for being half-Jewish. (He’s convinced they encouraged him to enlist hoping he’d get killed.) Burt dedicated himself to helping veterans with their ailments. He also administered a few too many drugs to himself. Meanwhile, Valerie disappeared one night, leaving Harold heartbroken; he returned to New York and got his law degree. That pretty much catches us up to the important plot malarkey here, where a young woman (Swift) hires Harold to represent her and Burt to help perform an autopsy. Her father led their regiment in the war, and she’s convinced his death was untimely. But her death definitely is, because they’re standing right next to her when a rottenmouthed thug (Olyphant) shoves her under the wheels of a moving truck and blames it on them. They scamper away.

Hold on, because the overconvolutedness of it all has just begun. There’s a point where Burt says, “All right, everything all at once,” and that’s kind of how the screenplay is constructed. Burt and Howard’s attempts to get out from under the wheels of this plot involves: The reintroduction of Valerie, whose brother Tom (Malek) is a birdwatching nut, and a man of lots of money and influence, and a husband to a nicely put-together lunatic (Taylor-Joy). Two detectives (Matthias Schoenaerts and Alessandro Nivola) on Burt and Harold’s trail. A pair of deep-cover spies (Myers and Shannon) posing as glass-eye merchants. The pathologist (Saldana) who might offer Burt more true affection than his wife. And the decorated General Gil Dillenbeck (De Niro), who can help our protagonists get into the deeper pickle they need to get into before they’re able to get out of it. How deep, exactly, is this pickle? Pretty much as deep as pickles get, of course.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Amsterdam is about an American hustle of another kind, one that’s more contemporary in theme, and spiked with a bit of Hitchcockian intrigue and dark humor. I also see it as a sister – maybe more of a half-sister – film to Guillermo del Toro’s similarly ambitious (albeit more competent) noir Nightmare Alley.

Performance Worth Watching: Robbie’s character is a little squidgy around the edges – OK, all the characters are squidgy around the edges – but she makes the most of a few center-frame direct-address shots in which she delivers earnest assertions that cut through some of the plot and thematic curlicues to remind us/them/anyone who’s listening about what’s important here.

Memorable Dialogue: An exchange between Burt and the General’s wife:

“You call your husband ‘General’?”

“Only on the weekdays.”

“What do you call him on weekends?”

“That’s a very personal question.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: The fact that Amsterdam isn’t insufferable seems like a small miracle. Is it as funny as we expect it to be? No. Is it as suspenseful as it should be? No. Does it take forever to get to the point? Yes, but it gets there eventually, and it’s a damn sharp end of a spear aimed at rich and powerful types who interpret American values through the lens of amoral capitalism. Using the factual Business Plot – a fascist U.S. coup attempt allegedly planned by a secret cabal of businessmen in 1933 – as his basis, Russell spins a madcap saga that doesn’t achieve the blissful absurdity of the Coen Brothers or the gripping intrigue of Hitchcock, but instead concludes on a tender, heartfelt note rooted in the friendship of the Bale, Washington and Robbie characters: Good times come and good times go, but there will always be companionship, warm memories, art, music and love.

Sorting through the clutter of this film, I believe Russell’s asserting that such sentiment is what we should fall back on when it seems like the world around us is crumbling and in danger of being devoured by big nasties like greed and prejudice, and raise your hand if that’s something that worries you about our current world. If only he spent more time with the core trio, who enjoy moments of poignant chemistry when they’re not being nudged out of the way by drop-in characters and special guest stars, like America is the Love Boat and also the Titanic, and while it’s near sinking, Burt and Harold and Valerie figure out their personal shit in a comically serpentine, somewhat clever manner.

Bale and Robbie are the heart of the film, the former hunched and odd and cartoonish but well-intentioned and lovable, and the latter showing laser-like sincerity. As for the rest of the cast, well, they’re not given enough to do, the material lacking the oomph allowing them to indulge their talents and personae and go over the top and be memorable. Shannon, Malek, Taylor-Joy and the like add enough color and eccentricity so the film doesn’t seem like a waste of talent. There are points where Russell stops and drops Bale voiceover to clarify the unwieldy plot, and it’s welcome, thank you, even if it renders the road bumpy and uneven. It’s hard not to appreciate the big swings Russell takes, the dogged peculiarity of his style and, after his dalliances with awards-prestige fare, his return to more idiosyncratic tones.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Amsterdam is a doozy, for better and for worse, but it’s not a dud.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.