‘Amsterdam’ Review: A Dam Shame It’s Such a Bore
A Totally Reel Review
Rate It Out of Eight
3.5/8
The title says it all. It seems like David O. Russell spent the vast majority of Amsterdam’s budget on hiring an all-star cast instead of hiring writers to make sense of his script. Christian Bale, John David Washington, and Margot Robbie lead along with a long list of other Oscar winners and nominated stars, including Robert De Niro, Rami Malek, Michael Shannon, and Chris Rock (not nominated but getting slapped at the Oscars deserves an honorable mention). Even Taylor Swift has a small role with limited speaking lines (I suppose David O. Russell didn’t want a repeat of Harry Styles in Don’t Worry Darling, another disappointing though arguably better film).
Perhaps it was the glory of an Oscar nomination that convinced these stars to sign on to work with David O. Russell. For those unfamiliar, he’s been known to abuse actresses on set and has also admitted to sexually assaulting his niece, defending himself by saying she was basically asking for it. Even putting the controversies aside, this is simply not a good movie. It’s 2 hours of the main trio talking to each other on various sets before the movie seems to remember that it’s a mystery. There’s an underwhelming and rushed reveal that makes me wish I didn’t waste nearly 2.5 hours of my Friday afternoon. Hopefully you can avoid that fate.
An Incoherent Mess
My biggest criticism of Amsterdam is the inconsistency in pacing and tone. It’s not immediately clear to the viewer what the main point of the story is or even what genre it is. Usually within the first 15–20 minutes, a movie should establish tone and give viewers a general idea of where it’s going. Amsterdam opens with a general from WWI poisoned mysteriously and his daughter Liz (Taylor Swift) asks Burt (Christian Bale) and Harold (John David Washington) to investigate. Liz is then shortly killed and her death sets in motion the rest of the plot. The best word I thought of to describe the majority of this movie is meandering. The viewer is dragged along on this wandering, aimless journey as we follow the characters from set to set, not making any real progress to solving the mystery that’s the heart of the premise. It’s not clear how anything that’s going on actually moves the plot forward and that’s because it doesn’t.
Amsterdam is so unnecessarily long that only about 70% of the 134 minute runtime actually moved the plot forward. I was confused for most of the movie about the genre and it comes off as if David O. Russell himself doesn’t know either. Is this a murder mystery? Historical drama? Maybe a comedy (a bad one at that)? The movie tries to establish itself as a dark comedy, but it doesn’t quite strike the right tone. Instead, it’ll be light-hearted and mildly funny before the scene cuts to graphic injuries and deaths. A better movie can make a seamless transition between gore and comedy (Bullet Train, for example, was surprisingly creative in how it mixed the two) but alas that was clearly not the case here. This movie just comes off as disjointed.
Perhaps the awful pacing could be forgiven if the main trio were actually entertaining. Despite watching them for more than two hours, I was never invested in what happens to any of them. Individually, Christian Bale and Margot Robbie are incredible actors. I haven’t seen John David Washington act before (one day I will force myself to watch Tenet), but he was fine in the movie. Christian Bale and Margot Robbie’s talents were wasted as the main trio had much chemistry together. For a movie called Amsterdam, I expected more of it to take place there. Only 20 minutes or so take place in Amsterdam and David O. Russell could have accomplished the purpose of that flashback (to show the trio’s bond) in 5 minutes. By the time we shifted back to the main storyline, it felt jarring to suddenly move back to a murder mystery.
For those who haven’t seen the movie, please skip this paragraph. The movie was so long that I was ready for the big reveal just so I could go home. It was either Robert De Niro or Rami Malek/Anya Taylor-Joy. Not sure if anyone noticed, but when Rami Malek asked the General to broadcast his speech at the reunion, his tie had tiny swastikas all over it. I love little details like that which make me dislike this movie just a little less.
The Mixed Messages on Race and Gender
Another sign of poor storytelling is the movie’s need to tell, instead of showing, the deeper messages and social commentary. I love great movies that can entertain and also tie in deeper messages or tug on our heart strings. Unfortunately, Amsterdam did none of these. It used a lot of voiceovers and dialogue to explicitly spell out the satire for the audiences. If you need to use voice overs to get your point across, then that’s just lazy and poor storytelling.
The movie is so bloated that viewers may have missed these messages if the characters had not explicitly told us. These include the importance of love and art, which is what makes life worth living; the dangers interracial couples faced back in the 1930s; how dangerous fascism is (takes place six years before the outbreak of WWII); and rich people trying to organize a coup (a little on the nose to January 6 but apparently did happen in real life). By explicitly voicing these messages, Amsterdam dilutes what little impact it had to begin with. Dead Poets Society is a much more compelling movie about the importance of art and literally any rom-com will show you how beautiful love is.
Given that most of the movie takes place in 1933, the movie treads carefully in its portrayal of black characters to avoid being canceled on Twitter. Burt (Christian Bale) often mentions how he hates how his black best friend is treated and we see Harold (John David Washington) bring up that he went to Columbia Law School in order to be respected when talking to the police. While these are nice gestures, that’s all it feels like — gestures. The antagonist is portrayed as racism incarnate and is too easily defeated. The ending feels anticlimactic and the characters (and by extension the movie) give themselves pats on the back for their triumphant victory against racism.
For those who have not seen the movie, please skip to Five Star Cast for a Two Star Movie. One specific instance I remember is Chris Rock’s character warning Burt and Harold not to mess with the body of Meekins. It’s even used in the trailer — a black man shouldn’t be caught messing with a dead white man. He continues to warn that with Liz (Taylor Swift) around, it’s even more dangerous, but something about his delivery bugs me. He’d rather be in trouble for harming a few white men than be caught harming a white woman. This is timely given the movie Till comes out next week, a true story of a 14-year-old black boy who was lynched for offending a white woman. Yet I can’t tell if the movie is playing it off as a joke. The Nazis were also underdeveloped antagonists and felt like a straw man that existed to applaud our main trio for not being fascists. Rami Malek’s character didn’t have much screen time and wasn’t fleshed out much.
None of the characters were particularly well-developed (shocker), but I do take issue with how a lot of the female characters were written as. Margot Robbie is a talented actress but she didn’t have much to work with here. Her character didn’t contribute to the story other than being one half of an interracial relationship and being the sister of the antagonist for pure shock value. She could have been played by anyone and there wouldn’t be much difference — except perhaps fewer closeups on her face (oh how prevalent the male gaze is). Apparently David O. Russell explicitly told her to use less energy to deliver her lines and talk as if she had taken Xanax. The other women aren’t much more than arm candy. Zoe Saldana’s character is just there to be a love interest to Christian Bale; Beatrice, Burt’s wife, was portrayed as a spineless daddy’s girl. The movie definitely doesn’t pass the Bechdel test from what I recall.
The only female character I was actually entertained by was Anya Taylor-Joy, who had the funniest line of the movie. Her line about the women letting their hair down to use as antenna to talk with the greater race was ridiculous but made me laugh (though 2 hours into the movie and bored out of my mind, I would’ve laughed at anything). She was great next to Rami Malek, who were probably the only bright spots of the movie. I still crack up thinking about them covering up the portraits of the three dictators. And the hedges get an honorable mention as well since his character clearly lacked subtlety.
Five Star Cast for a Two Star Movie
Amsterdam was so boring not even the cast could salvage it. The main trio lacked chemistry and what little charm the movie had was erased by the runtime. I’d advise against seeing this in a theater with plush seats (though honestly you won’t miss much). I will say that Rami Malek and Anya Taylor-Joy were the most entertaining parts (not a whole lot of competition given the writing). There’s not much else to say about the movie though I do want to give credit to the costume department, cinematographer, composer, and all the crew that made this movie happen. It had a lot of potential and looked great (I do love period pieces), but fell flat through no fault of theirs. Olivia Wilde once said that a bad movie is the director’s fault, but I’d argue writers are just as important. Thankfully, in this case, there’s only one man to blame.
And of course, some Letterboxd reviews from people who share my sentiment about the movie.
And of course, we have Amsterdam at home:
