Hello everyone,
The movie I am gonna review is a new American movie, "Hustlers", released in September 2019. It is crime-comedy film that derives its story from the New York Magazine article "The Hustlers at Scores" by the now well-known Hollywood press journalist Jessica Pressler. Her work seems to be almost written with the intention of editing it or having it edited into fiction on the silver screen. Her research into a group of strippers who stole from the rich, but did not give the loot to the poor, is no exception. These strippers are not inferior to many other film women who stand up for themselves. Hustlers fits in well with the current "women don't need men" trend that dominates Hollywood.
In the years before the economic crisis of 2008, comic strip veteran Ramona newcomer Destiny learns the tricks, dances and twists of the trade. Soon the comic strip duo grows into a money machine in the golden days of the strip clubs and they harass the wealthy stock market traders. With the strike of the Wall Street crisis, however, the Gucci fun is quickly over. Strip clubs are an unnecessary luxury, anything but hip and run empty. To maintain turnover, the clubs hire in cheaper immigrant girls and the lap dance changes into a three hundred dollar blowjob. Destiny becomes pregnant with her boyfriend, leaves the business and loses sight of Ramona.
When the ladies meet again a few years later and are somewhat destitute, the story finds its deserved pace. The strippers decide to take back what the Wall Street thieves have stolen from them and from everyone. They put together a gang that, with the help of a little narcotics, converts their hip cradles and temptations into a professional drying and theft company. One hundred thousand dollars a night is not unique. And what about the victims, the '(mostly) rich, (usually) disgusting, (in their minds) pathetic' men as Pressler describes them? They can hardly complain without embarrassment about an evening they spent in a strip club. And if they do, then no one believes them.
These power strippers are examples of modern feminists, who know that they should not focus on women as a sex, but themselves as a woman. And who better to give a face to this moment of power than superwoman Jennifer Lopez, who in her entrance scene throws her almost naked, fifty-year-old body into battle and a pole in a way that would frighten and discourage the average twenty-year-old actress. Jennifer Lopez, with her muscle performance, which as always has nothing to do with acting but everything to do with performance, turns Hustlers into an energetic and shiny production.
But that does not stop there. Screenwriter and director Lorene Scafaria did not add much to Pressler's article when writing the screenplay. She brings in a sick grandmother, a child, a lack of money and a sultry friendship between the two main hustlers. She has given the strippers a human touch. Take the Birdman-imitating opening scene, in which we follow Destiny in full view from the front in her service at the strip club. Choreographed by beats, she swings past her half-naked colleagues; along some passionless finishes; along the DJ, the bartender and the owner who has to give them money after she has cashed in her meager salary for the evening. We follow her until she is outside again in the drizzly night. She has given her body and soul and has done nothing about it - at least, this scene seems to want to tell us that. Especially when Destiny tucks her sick grandmother in the next scene the little money she has earned. All this suggests a socially critical film à la I Daniel Blake. And opens the way to accountability for the dubious behavior that awaits.
But it is there that Scafaria misses the mark somewhat. The power of Pressler's article and the power that one can draw from such stories is not in the accountability, it is precisely in the lack thereof. It lies in the fact that we do things because we can and want to. And because if we don't do it, others will. Or even: if we don't do it, maybe nobody does it and a chance is lost. It is about the 'want of wanting' as one of the real strippers describes it in Pressler's article. What Scafaria has added has unnecessarily watered down the story of the powerful strippers who take matters into their own hands. These strippers are not victims of the stock market men, they are their female equals.
Hustlers should therefore have been and could have been a real power film, but it is becoming a bit of predictable motives. In the end it is Ramona who understands how the world works and lets us leave the cinema with a sense of victory: "This whole country is a strip club. You've got people tossing the money and people doing the dance."
This movie really entertained me. It is based on real story and is full of suspense. You don't know where the really story ends and the BS begins. The second half of this movie is especially fascinating. I would give it 5 star and strongly recommend to watch.
