American Hustle (2013)

American Hustle gave director David O. Russell the chance to bring together his male and female leads of his last two critically acclaimed movies The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook (neither of which I've seen and I'll have to correct that). American Hustle is a 1970's set caper film based loosely on the real life FBI sting operation known as Abscam. Amy Adams and Christian Bale play two mid-scale con-artists forcibly recruited by an ambitious FBI agent played by Bradley Cooper to help him bust other con-artists. The issue is that the targets of Coopers operation keep getting bigger, first other mid-level con-artists, then some politicians, and then the mob. Things are further complicated by Coopers developing a strong attraction to Amy Adams, while Bale starts to feel bad for one of the operations targets, Camden, New Jersey mayor Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner). Then there's Bale's unstable Long Island wife Rosalyn, played by Jennifer Lawrence in a performance that steels the film. Also a couple of Boardwalk Empire regulars have small roles in this film that revolves largely around an Atlantic City re-development deal. American Hustle is a clever and well-paced comedy-drama with the bonus that, as the film states in the begging, some of it really happened. ***1/2