It’s been a long time between drinks for controversial auteur David O. Russell—his last feature film, Joy, which netted Jennifer Lawrence a Best Actress Oscar nomination, came out back in 2015. But the wait is over: Russell’s new film, the star-studded period caper Amsterdam, is in cinemas now.
Set in the 1930s, Amsterdam is a kind of screwball comedy that sees three friends—doctor Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale), lawyer Harold Woodman (John David Washington), and artist Valerie Voze (Margot Robbie)—who met in World War One Amsterdam having to unravel a labyrinthine conspiracy after one of them is accused of murdering an American general they all knew back in the day.
That labyrinth, to stretch a metaphor, is densely populated. Russell has assembled a ridiculous cast for his latest, including (deep breath) Chris Rock, Anya Taylor-Joy, Zoe Saldaña, Mike Myers, Michael Shannon, Timothy Olyphant, Andrea Riseborough, Taylor Swift, Matthias Schoenaerts, Alessandro Nivola, Rami Malek, and Robert De Niro, surely making this the most star-studded movie of the past… decade? Two? It’s been a while, at least (and Marvel movies don’t count).
It’s also worth noting that this Jazz Age caper is based, more or less, or real events: The Business Plot of 1933, when a conspiracy of plutocrats tried to stage a fascist coup and take over the United States—which sounds hauntingly familiar, now that you mention it, and makes Russell’s historical farce surprisingly relevant for our current moment in history.
Speaking of history, Russell has historically proven a dab hand at wrangling both sprawling casts (American Hustle comes to mind) and abrupt tonal shifts when handling actual events (Gulf War drama Three Kings), so he’s definitely on familiar territory here. This kind of sumptuous, sprawling, period narrative is all too rare these days, so if you need a fix, head to your local cinema now.
