Film Review: AMSTERDAM (2022): David O. Russell’s Film is a Bit Too Messy Despite an Attractive and Energetic Cast

Amsterdam Review

Amsterdam (2022) Film Review, a movie written and directed by David O. Russell and starring Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Robert De Niro, Rami Malek, Anya Taylor-Joy, Alessandro Nivola, Andrea Riseborough, Chris Rock, Matthias Schoenaerts, Michael Shannon, Mike Myers, Taylor Swift, Timothy Olyphant, Zoe Saldana, Mel Fair, Vaughn Page and Bonnie Hellman.

David O. Russell’s films have won a couple of the stars of Amsterdam Academy Award nods so it’s no surprise that those performers, Christian Bale and Robert De Niro, have once again teamed up with the always interesting Russell for a new picture. Russell’s new film feels stagey (thanks to a lot of dialogue) and dated and it is very slow-moving. On the plus side, however, the performers in the film all look great thanks to superb production design, beautifully designed costumes, attractive hairstyles and on-point cinematography. The film’s story, though, doesn’t do the actors and filmmakers justice and is the kind of plot that we’ve seen done before, only better.

Christian Bale is the star of Amsterdam. Bale portrays Burt Berendsen, a kind doctor with a glass eye who is a veteran of World War I. The action of the film is set during both 1918 and 1933. Burt becomes close friends with a lawyer named Harold Woodman (John David Washington) and a nurse named Valerie Voze (Margot Robbie with dark hair). Their lives are thrown for a curve when they are believed to be responsible for the murder of a general’s daughter, Liz Meekins (an underused but effective Taylor Swift). As the action of the movie is centered mostly in New York, we get a fair share of unusually quirky characters, some of whom are only marginally developed.

The whole movie is overstuffed with characters. As Burt’s less than fully supportive wife, Beatrice, Andrea Riseborough has never looked better on-screen but is rather one-note in her role as a rather unsympathetic woman. Beatrice helps the audience realize why Burt depends more on the friendship of Harold and Valerie to stay focused in life. This lack of appeal of the character of Beatrice is fully intentional by the filmmakers so, perhaps, Riseborough is not the problem. The script is.

Rami Malek and Anya Taylor-Joy are usually terrific but, here, their characters Tom and Libby (which function largely in the film’s twisty plot) are reduced to reciting rather lackluster dialogue which grows tiresome after a while. These characters are related to Valerie and hold the key to unraveling some of the film’s secrets. Taylor-Joy gets some humorous one-liners which don’t exactly play as well on-screen as they may have sounded on paper.

Margot Robbie hasn’t looked this good in a film since her performance in The Wolf of Wall Street. With dark hair, the character of Valerie is well-defined and Robbie is in fine form. Valerie has a history of seizures and tries to easily walk up a flight of stairs unsuccessfully with her two male counterparts beside her in one scene. The audience will feel sympathy for Robbie’s character which becomes the most fleshed-out person in the whole entire movie.

Robert De Niro plays General Gil Dillenbeck who helps the movie out a bit with some solid acting even though his initial lines in the film are flatly delivered. De Niro’s role comes to life towards the end of the picture and helps reveal the plot details which involve the efforts by the bad guys to try to overthrow the President, FDR. Mike Myers of Austin Powers fame even pops up at one or two points in the movie as a spy. While it was nice to see him back in action, the actor is limited by the less than stellar writing of his character here.

Bale surely tries to capture the nuances of his character and it’s a well-realized performance but both he and Washington compete for screen time and sort of cancel each other out making both of their characters seem equally ordinary when analyzed on their own. Of course, Bale has the slight edge being the character has a disability which makes the role a bit showier than Washington’s. As a team with Valerie, however, the trio of actors fares better as best friends. These stars’ interaction as performers is delightful at times and can really serve to make us root for these characters even if the movie is sometimes moving forward at the pace of a sloth.

Amsterdam has many other characters that lack focus. One is played by Chris Rock (who is full of energy) and another is played by Zoe Saldana (who tries her best for sure to be an integral part of the story). There is possibly a longer director’s cut of Amsterdam somewhere out there. I’d like to see it one day and decide if Russell made the right choices in terms of what scenes he decided to leave in and cut out.

David O. Russell is one of the most accomplished filmmakers of his generation. His Silver Linings Playbook got four Academy Award acting nominations for the year it came out and won Best Actress for Jennifer Lawrence. It will be hard for Russell to justify the disappointment of Amsterdam which probably won’t score any acting nominations. On the other hand, if you didn’t tell me he directed the film, I’d say the movie had a lot of good scenes. However, coming from Russell, those scenes should have been great.

Rating: 6/10

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