Hustlers (2019)
The film taking the fall by storm.
I hadn’t heard anything about Hustlers until a coworker was excitedly telling me all about this stripper movie she was going to go see. I was excited that she was excited, but I was going to see The Goldfinch that weekend and had no desire to see this film based on her description. But then The Goldfinch bombed and Hustlers got glowing reviews and I felt, for a second, like I was living in Bizarro World. So Jen and I decided that we had to see this film.
While I didn’t enjoy this film, I appreciate many of its elements.
As everyone who has seen this film has commented, Jennifer Lopez’s performance was phenomenal. She brought Ramona to life and completely owned that screen. The character had a depth and complexity that I wasn’t expecting from this film or, quite honestly, from J.Lo. I loved many of the themes that this film discussed and I enjoyed the elegant way the film showed their rise and fall that mirrored that of the Wall Street men they were hustling.
But Destiny was a letdown for me. I didn’t believe Constance Wu’s performance, especially because she shared so much precious screen time with J.Lo’s stellar performance. I didn’t empathize with her, and the emotional beats that they tried to hit just didn’t land with me. And because she was the protagonist and the emotional…
