Movie Reviews: American Hustle.

 If I was a Hollywood superhero - and all the evidence tells me I'm not - I would probably choose side-projects that didn't require me to wear the same sort of outlandish outfits and bizarre makeup.

 This is clearly not the case for former Batman Christian Bale, or The Avengers' erstwhile Hawkeye Jeremy Renner, both of whom crop up in American Hustle in such over-the-top wigs and period, 1970s clothing choices that you begin to suspect all actors are just overgrown kids who want to play dress-up. Ironically, Amy "Lois Lane" Adams is wearing very little for the entire movie, but there's a whole debate about gender roles implied by that which I'm going to summarily ignore.

 Costumes and actors are really the only things that can be dissected in any review of American Hustle, as the plot is so vast and complicated that any attempt at synopsis would be futile. The setup involves Christian Bale's con-artist and his lover Amy Adams being caught by FBI man Bradley Cooper, and blackmailed into becoming poachers-turned-gamekeepers. Soon the plot takes in New Jersey Mayor Jeremy Renner, a fake Arab Sheik, intersecting affairs and double-crosses and Bale's neurotic wife.

 If it sounds complicated on paper, it's less so on screen, which is testimony to the film as a whole and the performances in particular.

 All of the characters are fully believable, and almost all are sad, desperate people who are never quite as smart as they think they are.

 Amy Adams probably has the most complexities as a woman whose untouchable facade is ultimately a product of her fragility. By turns brittle and sensual, she keeps the audience guessing about her motivations, quite possibly because she never seems sure of them herself. She is both a little-girl-lost and a terrifying example of the fury of a woman scorned.

 Bradley Cooper, meanwhile, tamps down his more comedic side to play a greed-driven FBI agent who is in hopelessly over his head but too blinded by avarice to heed the warnings of his superior, played by comedian Louis C.K. as a more pathetic variant of his own standup persona. Indeed, all of the characters on show tend to be pitiable rather than likeable. The audience won't hate them for their awful actions, only feel sorry for them.

 The closest the film has to a nice guy is Renner's Mayor, who is sucked into the tempest by trying to do the right thing for his constituents. Renner has become the action world's answer to Jason Bateman; immediately, superhumanly likeable on screen, but sometimes given little to do as a result. It would be nice to see him play a villain one day.

 Jennifer Lawrence is not an actress I'd ever been familiar with, as I never got into The Hunger Games and as such dismissed her as being "for kids." I shouldn't have, as she might be my favourite thing in this film. Arrogant, preening and damaged, Hudson's performance is so believably nauseating that at times I found myself wanting to reach through the screen and strangle her.

 If I have anything bad to say about the film, it's oddly to do with Christian Bale. It's not that he gives a bad performance - he doesn't. He's Christian Bale. Indeed, his paunch throughout the film seems to show that Bale has once again transformed his body to fit a role, something that he surely can't keep doing without risking serious health damage. [Edit: I checked. He gained the weight for real and ended up herniating two discs in his back with his constant slouchy posture.]

 What bothered me about Bale was that his voice and mannerisms screamed Robert DeNiro. His character admittedly owes a huge debt to DeNiro in "Casino," as a master manipulator brought low by his few genuine personal relationships. Still, he raids the DeNiro persona so completely that I found it distracting, not least when the real Robert DeNiro appears for a cameo.

 He's good, too, by the way, and responsible for one of the film's more heart-stopping moments. I think there's some weird clause in his contract that he can only put effort into a movie these days if Bradley Cooper is involved.

 Overall, American Hustle is a tragicomic character study of flawed people. It's definitely not something to watch on a sunny afternoon, but it is well worth watching, all the same.