Written and directed by David O. Russell
Starring Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Robert de Niro
Rated R for brief violence and bloody images
Runtime: 2 hours 14 minutes
In theaters October 7

by Ryan Silberstein, Managing Editor, Red Herring

Amsterdam is a pretty fun movie I’ll probably never watch again. The first from known asshole/neice groper  David O. Russell in five years, it disguises lackluster dialogue with a ridiculously stacked and charming cast. So in the moment, it goes down easy, especially if you find Margot Robbie saying “I had to hit a lady with a brick one time” in a New York-ish accent charming (which I do). But the minute you start to think too much about it, even while watching it, everything about it melts away like cotton candy exposed to moisture. 

Set in the interwar period, Amsterdam kicks off with two friends, Dr. Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale), and lawyer Harold Woodsman (John David Washington), implicated in a murder. Hired by Liz Meekins (Taylor Swift), daughter of Senator Meekins (Ed Begley, Jr.), to investigate his death, they soon find themselves caught up in a plot relating to the senator’s death as the prime suspects. Burt and Harold became friends during the First World War, with Burt serving as the commander of an all-Black regiment assembled by Meekins. After the war, they were recovering in a French hospital under the care of a nurse, Valerie (Margot Robbie), and moved to Amsterdam together, where the trio became inseparable. The murder plot picks up after the two men have returned to New York, while Valerie disappeared, and has not been seen or heard by the other members of the trio in over a decade. There’s a lot more to the plot, and one of the other key players is retired general Gil Dillenback (Robert de Niro), one of the leaders of the Bonus Army.

I am an easy mark for capers set against a historical backdrop. Argo, The Post, and The Favourite, are some examples of movies that use real history to tell a fictionalized story in an engaging way. So invoking the Business Plot, an actual pro-Hitler political conspiracy in the United States, and tying that into a murder plot with comedic tones is very much in my wheelhouse. Which makes Amsterdam’s tepid unfurling that much more disappointing. The time period is a fertile ground for telling all kinds of stories, and Amsterdam mostly uses it for convoluted exposition. Each of the characters are more or less one-dimensional, and while the cast does an excellent job of trying to round them out in performance, the lack of arcs for any of the characters combined with the repeated exposition dumps reinforces the trifling nature of the experience. 

While Bale is doing one of his big performances, he still brings a lot of soul to the character of Burt, and enough where the revelations about his life throughout the story feel meaningful. John David Washington, Margot Robbie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Rock, and even Rami Malek each make the most of what they can, demonstrating that star power still means something. Sadly, Taylor Swift doesn’t get enough to do to really make an impression through acting, but her cameo is fun nonetheless. 

Amsterdam’s biggest deficiency is tone. Not funny enough or loose enough to be an outright comedy, but too loose and carefree to be an effective thriller, it sits in a no man’s land. There are certainly comic beats throughout, but they rarely land, and at times it is difficult to assess what the joke even was. A few more punch ups here and there would have gone a long way to make a better comedy. Nor does Russell spend any time trying to fire up tension or a sense of danger, making the film feel like it’s just walking in a straight line despite its twisty plotting. All of this is capped off by a lackluster finale that doesn’t tip its hand to comic farce or rouse any sense of excitement. Thinking back to it only further cements it as dead on arrival, requiring only a perfunctory autopsy.