Hustlers: Don't fall for this Hustle...
Hustlers is a movie that I didn’t hear anything about then a week or so before its release I was bombarded with whisperings about it from the internet and word of mouth. Honestly it almost felt like subliminal messaging. But the biggest take away I heard was that Jennifer Lopez was great in it. There were no other “big releases” last week so I decided to go check it out.
The film is based on a 2015 New York Magazine article titled "The Hustlers at Scores" by Jessica Pressler. Just a quick aside so you can all appreciate the lineage of article based movies; other movies inspired/based on articles include: Die Hard 4: Live Free or Die Hard, The Fast and the Furious, Argo, Top Gun, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Dog Day Afternoon. This film kind of leans harder into the fantastical group rather than the more strait-laced group like Argo or Dog Day. The movie is about a group of former strippers that devise a plan to drug and then steal money from old clients. There I summed up this movie in a single sentence. For a movie that has a near 2-hour runtime you’d expect some sort of deeper plot but nope with a single sentence I can tell you the entire plot of this film.
The film is oddly structured in some way it feels a little like it wanted to be like Usual Suspects but in this case, there was no twist so the narrative form feels completely pointless. The events are told as a reporter named Elizabeth (Julia Stiles) interviews Destiny (Constance Wu) about the drugging scheme. The story is told with a lot of time jumps that don’t really feel necessary. The first 30 minutes of the film plays like a softcore porn. It shows Destiny starting at the beginnings of her stripper days where she meets Ramona (Jennifer Lopez) and they become fast friends. Everything then proceeds to glorify the stripper life complete with slow motion montages of male clientele throwing dollar bills, and cameos by Lizzo and Cardi B., and Usher. This entire portion could have been cut down to 10-15 minutes, but I feel like this was put in to entice male moviegoers to see this trash fire of a movie.
After that it jumps to years later when the economy crashed in 2008. Destiny has a child and needs to make money and by serendipity meets Ramona again. Ramona is now running a scheme where she and a group of girls meet men in bars, drug them, and then bring them to a strip club where they run up their credit cards and give the club a percentage. Destiny ends up reluctantly joining then. At this point the movie jumps back and forth between present day, clean cut Destiny talking to Elizabeth and the events themselves. Prior to watching this film, I knew nothing of the actual events so based on the film structure I was expecting some sort of revelation or twist to come but it never did. There was absolutely no point in telling this story that way. The film tries to make the drugging plot into something fascinating but it’s not it was simple; the women didn’t have any sort of savvy like they wanted to pretend they did. They literally targeted men, drugged them, and took their money; nothing more complex. The film was boring and had no right to be as long as it was.
A lot of the character stuff felt off to me so I went and read the article it was based on when I got home. The article is actually a more interesting and a less time-wasting method of getting the entire story if you’re interested. But after reading the article I can understand why the characterization in the movie was so weird and clunky. The woman that Destiny was based on is a total piece of shit that spends most of the article trying make sure you know how smart she is but also trying to justify her actions. In the film they try to make Destiny this sympathetic character that people can root for, which doesn’t work at all. Every single person they steal from is portrayed as a cardboard Wall Street asshole. In the article the woman Ramona is based on is almost nonexistent. Needless to say, the movie takes a lot of liberties.
The article itself even feels like something that you might hear on the news at like 11 o clock when you’re busy doing something else. I don’t really understand why anyone even wanted to make this into a movie. There was absolutely nothing interesting about; there’s no intrigue, there’s no conflict, there’s barely any scheme. I think in some sick way the movie wants to bill itself as empowering for women because they’re taking it to the man. I mean even the tagline for the article wants to portray it as such: “Here’s a modern Robin Hood story for you: a few strippers who stole from (mostly) rich, (usually) disgusting, (in their minds) pathetic men and gave to, well, themselves.”
The only real bright spot to this otherwise horrible movie was Jennifer Lopez’s acting. She was very much into this role and did everything she possibly could to bring life to an otherwise boring and lifeless character. So, in a way I guess I did get what I was promised. Oh yeah Lili Reinhart and Kiki Palmer were also in the movie and they did acting things…
This is a story that should have been on an ID channel show at 2 in the morning on a Saturday that I can have on in the background while I play video games. It was a horrible, boring slog of a movie that I wanted to be over but just kept going. Maybe if it were shorter, I would have liked it more or maybe if they had gotten rid of the ridiculous story structure. But as it stands this is probably the worst movie I’ve seen all year. But it does stand true to its title I sure did get Hustled out of my time.
TL: DR: Awful Movie. Just read this article if you want to know the story https://www.thecut.com/2015/12/robin-hood-strippers-scores-c-v-r.html . 2 dollar bills out of 10.
The film is based on a 2015 New York Magazine article titled "The Hustlers at Scores" by Jessica Pressler. Just a quick aside so you can all appreciate the lineage of article based movies; other movies inspired/based on articles include: Die Hard 4: Live Free or Die Hard, The Fast and the Furious, Argo, Top Gun, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Dog Day Afternoon. This film kind of leans harder into the fantastical group rather than the more strait-laced group like Argo or Dog Day. The movie is about a group of former strippers that devise a plan to drug and then steal money from old clients. There I summed up this movie in a single sentence. For a movie that has a near 2-hour runtime you’d expect some sort of deeper plot but nope with a single sentence I can tell you the entire plot of this film.
The film is oddly structured in some way it feels a little like it wanted to be like Usual Suspects but in this case, there was no twist so the narrative form feels completely pointless. The events are told as a reporter named Elizabeth (Julia Stiles) interviews Destiny (Constance Wu) about the drugging scheme. The story is told with a lot of time jumps that don’t really feel necessary. The first 30 minutes of the film plays like a softcore porn. It shows Destiny starting at the beginnings of her stripper days where she meets Ramona (Jennifer Lopez) and they become fast friends. Everything then proceeds to glorify the stripper life complete with slow motion montages of male clientele throwing dollar bills, and cameos by Lizzo and Cardi B., and Usher. This entire portion could have been cut down to 10-15 minutes, but I feel like this was put in to entice male moviegoers to see this trash fire of a movie.
After that it jumps to years later when the economy crashed in 2008. Destiny has a child and needs to make money and by serendipity meets Ramona again. Ramona is now running a scheme where she and a group of girls meet men in bars, drug them, and then bring them to a strip club where they run up their credit cards and give the club a percentage. Destiny ends up reluctantly joining then. At this point the movie jumps back and forth between present day, clean cut Destiny talking to Elizabeth and the events themselves. Prior to watching this film, I knew nothing of the actual events so based on the film structure I was expecting some sort of revelation or twist to come but it never did. There was absolutely no point in telling this story that way. The film tries to make the drugging plot into something fascinating but it’s not it was simple; the women didn’t have any sort of savvy like they wanted to pretend they did. They literally targeted men, drugged them, and took their money; nothing more complex. The film was boring and had no right to be as long as it was.
A lot of the character stuff felt off to me so I went and read the article it was based on when I got home. The article is actually a more interesting and a less time-wasting method of getting the entire story if you’re interested. But after reading the article I can understand why the characterization in the movie was so weird and clunky. The woman that Destiny was based on is a total piece of shit that spends most of the article trying make sure you know how smart she is but also trying to justify her actions. In the film they try to make Destiny this sympathetic character that people can root for, which doesn’t work at all. Every single person they steal from is portrayed as a cardboard Wall Street asshole. In the article the woman Ramona is based on is almost nonexistent. Needless to say, the movie takes a lot of liberties.
The article itself even feels like something that you might hear on the news at like 11 o clock when you’re busy doing something else. I don’t really understand why anyone even wanted to make this into a movie. There was absolutely nothing interesting about; there’s no intrigue, there’s no conflict, there’s barely any scheme. I think in some sick way the movie wants to bill itself as empowering for women because they’re taking it to the man. I mean even the tagline for the article wants to portray it as such: “Here’s a modern Robin Hood story for you: a few strippers who stole from (mostly) rich, (usually) disgusting, (in their minds) pathetic men and gave to, well, themselves.”
The only real bright spot to this otherwise horrible movie was Jennifer Lopez’s acting. She was very much into this role and did everything she possibly could to bring life to an otherwise boring and lifeless character. So, in a way I guess I did get what I was promised. Oh yeah Lili Reinhart and Kiki Palmer were also in the movie and they did acting things…
This is a story that should have been on an ID channel show at 2 in the morning on a Saturday that I can have on in the background while I play video games. It was a horrible, boring slog of a movie that I wanted to be over but just kept going. Maybe if it were shorter, I would have liked it more or maybe if they had gotten rid of the ridiculous story structure. But as it stands this is probably the worst movie I’ve seen all year. But it does stand true to its title I sure did get Hustled out of my time.
TL: DR: Awful Movie. Just read this article if you want to know the story https://www.thecut.com/2015/12/robin-hood-strippers-scores-c-v-r.html . 2 dollar bills out of 10.
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