Christian Bale’s Amsterdam character spends a great deal of time begging everyone to remain optimistic. Don’t fall for it, people. Optimism isn’t warranted when it comes to this unnecessarily convoluted dramedy.
Amsterdam is neither funny nor fully comprehensible. This meandering mess boasts an A-list cast that’s given the extraordinary task of attempting to pull together the scattered shards of a plot.
Spoiler alert: They’re only sporadically successful.
Written and directed by David O. Russell, whose last decent film (American Hustle) also starred Christian Bale, Amsterdam isn’t so much a movie event as it is a test of endurance. Russell’s got Bale, John David Washington, and Margot Robbie shouldering most of the load, but he’s not satisfied with wasting the big three. Russell packed Amsterdam with a plethora of Hollywood’s shiniest stars but gave each very little to do. With razor-thin characters, this assemblage of recognizable faces seems to have been gathered to impress just by their very presence in this R-rated adventure.
Amsterdam is part murder mystery, part romance, and part thriller, with a few pratfalls tossed in for good measure. And if you don’t like a scene’s tone, wait for just a beat – it’ll change moments later. Settling on any one thing – the genre, the pacing, or even the point of the story – isn’t something Russell’s ungainly political satire attempts to accomplish.
Despite the two+ hour running time and dozens of stars, there’s very little by way of an actual story. Christian Bale plays Dr. Burt Berendsen, a disgraced doctor with a glass eye and a face that bears the scars of war. Burt’s got a good heart and specializes in treating his fellow vets, and has remained best friends with Harold Woodman (John David Washington) after serving together in the Great War. Woodman’s now a lawyer, which comes in handy when the pair are implicated in the murder of the daughter of recently deceased Bill Meekins (Ed Begley Jr), the commander of their battalion.
Prior to her untimely death, Bill’s daughter enlisted Harold and Burt’s help in figuring out how her father died. After her death, Burt and Harold head out on a wild adventure searching for clues as to who poisoned Bill – a hunt that involves cameo appearances by a wealth of big names in tiny roles.
By way of flashback, we learn the Burt and Harold duo was once a trio. Nurse Valerie Voze (Margot Robbie) added to her bizarre collection of shrapnel while treating Burt’s battalion, and in the process worked her way into their hearts (Harold’s in particular) with her effervescent personality.
The trio’s separated at one point which is a shame since the fragment of the film that focuses on their escapades in Amsterdam is the most entertaining portion of the movie. They’re brought back together later on, but the bloom is off the rose by the time they’re reunited on screen.
Smushed into the story are Michael Shannon and Mike Myers as bird-obsessed not-so-secret secret agents; Alessandro Nivola and Matthias Schoenaerts as detectives who aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed; a nearly unrecognizable Timothy Olyphant playing a scenery-chomping bad guy; and Rami Malek and Anya Taylor-Joy as a high society couple who would fit right in with today’s looniest conspiracy theorists.
Taylor Swift makes a brief but impactful appearance, and Chris Rock drops in occasionally to point out things only white people can get away with. Zoe Saldaña falls for Bale’s Burt, even though he’s married to the social climbing Andrea Riseborough, the daughter of millionaire bigots. And finally, Robert De Niro, playing a highly respected general, is tasked with gathering the assorted storylines together and bringing the film to an understandable, satisfactory conclusion. That herculean task is too much for even the two-time Oscar winner to pull off.
Amsterdam’s loosely inspired by the Business Plot of 1933, which I’ll admit to knowing nothing about before the film and only slightly more about at its conclusion. The Business Plot involved businessmen plotting a coup to overthrow the US government and install a dictator, but Amsterdam waves at the coup-planning storyline – rather than paying it the attention it needs or deserves – until the film’s last 15 minutes or so. It’s only then that this overarching plot comes into focus. By the time what’s been going on for the previous one hour and 45 minutes is sort of made clear, it’s incredibly difficult to care about trying to put together the pieces.
GRADE: C-
MPAA Rating: R for brief violence and bloody images
Running Time: 2 hours 14 minutes
Release Date: October 7, 2022
Studio: 20th Century Studios
