Hustlers
Dustin Chase
There are a lot of montages in “Hustlers.” The most important is Jennifer Lopez‘s entrance, which is wild, glittery, nasty, and impressive. Her physicality, along with nearly everything else, is on full display. The excitement really ends after the pole dance, but, unfortunately, the musical montage of glamourous strippers continues in slow motion. Based on a true story of savvy New York strippers drugging men for money (no coincidence rapper Cardi B is featured in the cast), “Hustlers” doesn’t tell a story as much as it just moves the characters from one bad idea to another. What’s worse, Loraine Scafaria’s feature doesn’t make room for empathy anywhere, not with the victims or the criminals. We just observe the story, and then it’s over.
Best friends Destiny (Constance Wu) and queen of the elusive strip club Ramona (Lopez) get a modest take from their provocative dances and teasing outfits. It’s shameful work, but they view it as their only option. Then, the Great Recession hits, and money stops flowing into the club. Destiny and Ramona, desperate to maintain their lifestyle, decide to drug Wall Street sharks while providing them a good time will fill their bank accounts quicker. These women have been treated like crap by these men for years. Why not take a little back? Both women have children to feed. Their scam catches up with them when they get lazy and hustle the wrong guy.
""Hustlers" has a lot of fur flying, champagne popping and some of the hottest stars from music and film scantily clad, but little more."
“Motherhood is a mental illness,” Ramona says, which is basically excuse number one for their criminal actions. Later in the film, an entire scene is spent justifying their actions. “Hustlers” has a lot of fur flying, champagne popping, and some of the hottest stars from music and film scantily clad, but little more. Lopez (“Second Act“) plays herself, as she does in every movie bearing her name. She is selling her brand whether you realize it or not. Wu is the sidekick, driving the narrative by telling her story to a reporter (Julia Stiles). The voiceover is persistently annoying. More than once Ramona refers to “the past”, which was literally minutes ago in running time. She also makes multiple references to their actions, “We were hurricanes,” which the film somehow tries to spin as a positive thing.
“Hustlers” passes the trashy point pretty early, and nosedives into a simple retelling of events that is less than entertaining. Bad people doing bad things. It’s a hard sell and for many viewers, adding pop stars who have no business on the big screen doesn’t help. Another one of Ramona’s instructions to the girls is to “drain the clock, not the c**k.” That certainly proves true with “Hustlers” grossly unjustified running time, compounded by the inexcusably bad use of musical montages. “Hustlers” biggest failure is how, despite all, it never manages to be entertaining.
Final Thought
"Hustlers" embodies a trashy music video that stops periodically for some really bad dialogue and plotting.