|
 A fictional film built around the real-life Abscam scandal
that led to the conviction of a U.S. senator and six
congressmen, "American Hustle" last week won the New York Film
Critics Circle award for best film of 2013 and a best supporting
actress prize for Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence.
With its twisting plot, viewers are left guessing who is conning
whom. But for Russell, nominated for best directing Oscars for
his two previous movies, "The Fighter" and "Silver Linings
Playbook", the heart of the film is its characters.
"It was an amazing group of people in a heck of a predicament
that I found to be filled with passion," he said while doing
last-minute touch ups on the film that opens in limited U.S.
theaters on Friday and wide release Dec. 20.
"The predicament is a great blowtorch for the characters and
their world. I've come to see that I adore characters who are
reinventing themselves, who are the salt of the earth, who are
dreamers."
"YOU WRITE IT FOR THEM"
Russell said he felt his other films, starting with "The
Fighter", and changes in his own life, were preparation for
"American Hustle."
He recruited an ensemble cast including Christian Bale, who
picked up a best supporting actor Oscar for his role in "The
Fighter" and is nearly unrecognizable as the overweight,
balding, small-time hustler Irving Rosenfeld.
Four-time Oscar nominee Amy Adams, another "Fighter" veteran,
plays his former stripper girlfriend Sydney Prosser. With her
plunging necklines, fake accent and furs, she poses as a British
lady with banking connections in London to lure clients into the
scams.
Lawrence, a best actress Academy Award winner last year for
"Silver Linings Playbook", is Irving's ditzy, bored, suburban
wife Rosalyn. Bradley Cooper, who starred opposite Lawrence in
Russell's "Playbook," is Richie DiMaso, a curly-haired,
ambitious but wild FBI agent. He convinces Irving and Sydney
that joining the sting is preferable to a jail term.
[to top of second column] |
 New to the Russell crew is Jeremy Renner, of "The
Hurt Locker," as New Jersey politician Carmine Polito, sporting a
pompadour that would be the envy of any Las Vegas Elvis
impersonator.
Robert De Niro also makes an appearance as an Arabic-speaking
mobster.
"You write it for them," Russell, who penned the screenplay with
co-writer Eric Warren Singer, said about the actors. "It inspires me
to want to deliver a role worthy of them, which helps me write."
Russell also leans heavily on music, as in "Silver Linings
Playbook," to convey emotion in the film. Irving and Sydney connect
and fall in love to Duke Ellington's "Jeep's Blues."
A duet to Tom Jones' "Delilah" seals the male bond between Irving
and Carmine, and Rosalyn vents her frustration and anger wearing
yellow gloves and cleaning furiously while singing Paul McCartney's
"Live and Let Die."
"That was a crazy moment," Lawrence said about the memorable scene.
Just as hair defined the characters, from Richie's self-styled perm
to Rosalyn's cascading updo and Irving's comb-over, '70s fashion also
played a significant role.
"It was Halloween for a decade. The clothes were garish and the
style was phenomenal to look back on but the people themselves were
no different," said Bale.
Whether it is Bale playing an out-of-shape con-man or Adams as a
sexy swindler, Russell cast each actor against type, wanting them to
do something they had never done before.
"That's really what the whole movie is about," he said, "your
backstage self, where you are coming from and where you are going,
what you want to be and what you've been, and what you are in the
middle for each of these people."
(Editing by Mary Milliken and Nick
Zieminski)
[© 2013 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2013 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
