'Amsterdam' has Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, even Taylor Swift. But it's a period-piece fail
Everyone appreciates a good effort, but sometimes you just try too hard.
David O. Russell does, anyway. Sometimes it works for the writer and director, as with “American Hustle” or “Silver Linings Playbook.”
And sometimes it doesn’t.
That’s the case with “Amsterdam,” a star-studded period-piece misfire that wanders all over the place, looking for tone and a coherent story — any story, really, because there are some potentially good ones there.
The cast is basically a red-carpet lineup for the Academy Awards. Some of the story, as we’re told at the outset, really happened. Which means, of course, a lot of it didn’t.
I guess in some ways putting Christian Bale and Margot Robbie and Robert De Niro and John David Washington and Chris Rock and Michael Shannon and Taylor Swift and on and on and on in a movie and having it still turn out feeling half-baked, is impressive.
A huge cast of big stars meander through a convoluted plot
Bale plays Burt Berendsen, a World War I veteran and doctor, who went off to battle under pressure from his Park Avenue in-laws, who he suspects hoped he wouldn’t come back. He did, but his wife Beatrice (Andrea Riseborough, delightful as someone who isn’t) won’t let him live in their apartment.
New blood: New 'SNL' season won't have Aidy Bryant. Here's who will be on it
One day Harold Woodman (Washington), who served with Berendsen and is now a lawyer, asks to meet him. He tells Burt that the general who put their regiment together (Ed Begley Jr.) is dead. The general’s daughter (Swift) suspects foul play and wants Burt and Harold to find out who might have killed her father.
Things go awry from the start. Soon Burt and Harold are murder suspects. If this sounds like an excellent time for an extended flashback, well, lucky you.
Burt and Harold are badly injured in battle and wind up in a hospital in France, where they meet Valerie Voze (Robbie), a nurse who speaks French but is American. Burt has lost his eye and part of his face, but Valerie knows someone in Amsterdam who can help.
Off the trio goes. A couple of poorly disguised bird-watching spies (Shannon and Mike Myers) help Burt acquire a new eye. Meanwhile romance blooms between Harold and Valerie (there is a nice nod to the seminal dance scene from Jean-Luc Godard’s “Band of Outsiders” and a lot of François Truffaut's “Jules and Jim” vibes in this segment). They live in a kind of gauzy bliss. But Burt wants to get back home.
Happy horror: 'Smile' is a highly anticipated horror movie that certainly will scare
The true parts of the story are clumsily meant to mirror current issues
Which brings us back to the present, a few years later. Burt and Harold, desperate to clear their names, run into Valerie, who they haven’t seen for years, at the home of her brother Tom (Rami Malek) and his wife Libby (Anya Taylor-Joy — the stars just keep piling up). Burt and Harold think that a highly decorated general, Gil Dillenbeck (De Niro), can clear their names if they can meet him; Tom and Libby seem unusually interested in making that happen.
Running through it all is a genuine threat to democracy (which was real), and Russell is not subtle in using it to echo the current situation.
It takes some time getting there, though, as the murder mystery and the overthrowing-the-government elements don’t make for an easy fit.
The film at times seems like it’s pieced together from vaguely related parts. Good mysteries do that — but they have to fit together in the end.
He's back: TV news anchor Derek Staahl is making a comeback in Phoenix
When Taylor Swift doesn't get top billing, you've got a cast of big stars
Bale is interesting as an always-distracted man still fighting for his country, if in offbeat ways — he bumbles around in his search for the truth (and a new type of pain-killer).
Washington’s performance is more straightforward. Robbie’s character changes so much that she’s basically playing two or three roles, and can’t decide how madcap to make them. She’s good but necessarily has to bounce around a lot.
Best is De Niro and Riseborough.
De Niro plows straight ahead as the tough-as-nails general who is willing to call a coward a coward, even if his life is on the line. It makes you long for that kind of thing in the present day.
Riseborough gives the most nuanced performance in the movie. Her Beatrice is rich, spoiled and haughty, but has a weird love for Burt (heightened by his scars in a weird kink). She navigates the different tones in the film with seeming ease. Sometimes you hate her, but you always believe her.
“Amsterdam,” on the whole, can’t make those transitions as smoothly. The star wattage is blinding, but the film fizzles out.
'Amsterdam' 2.5 stars
Great ★★★★★ Good ★★★★
Fair ★★★ Bad ★★ Bomb ★
Director: David O. Russell.
Cast: Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Robinson.
Rating: R for brief violence and bloody images.
Note: In theaters Oct. 7.
Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: @goodyk. Subscribe to the weekly movies newsletter.
Subscribe to azcentral.com today. What are you waiting for?
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: 'Amsterdam' movie review: Big stars can't salvage a shoddy story
