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Simultaneously overstuffed and undernourished, frantic and meandering, “Amsterdam” is one big, star-studded, hot mess of a movie.

Christian Bale , Margot Robbie , John David Washington , Robert De Niro , Anya Taylor-Joy , Rami Malek , Chris Rock , Michael Shannon , Zoe Saldana , Alessandro Nivola and many more major names: How can you amass this cast and go so wrong? Simply putting them in a room and watching them chit-chat for two-plus hours—or say nothing at all, for that matter—would have been infinitely more interesting. Alas, David O. Russell has concocted all manner of adventures and detours, wacky hijinks, and elaborate asides to occupy his actors, none of which is nearly as clever or charming as he seems to think.

Over and over again, I asked myself as I was watching “Amsterdam”: What is this movie about? Where are we going with this? I’d have to stop and find my bearings: What exactly is happening now? And not in a thrilling, stimulating way, as in “ Memento ,” for example, or “ Cats .” It’s all a dizzying piffle—until it stops dead in its tracks and forces several of its stars to make lengthy speeches elucidating the points Russell himself did not make over the previous two rambling hours. The grand finale gives us some interminable, treacly narration, explaining the importance of love and kindness over the film's images of bohemian rhapsody we’d just seen not too long ago.

As is the case in so many of the writer/director’s other movies, we have the sensation as we’re watching that anything could happen at any moment. He typically employs such verve in his camerawork and takes such ambitious tonal swings that you wonder in amazement how he manages to keep it all cohesive and intact. This time, he doesn’t. Because “Amsterdam” lacks the compelling visual language of “ Three Kings ” or “ American Hustle ,” for instance, and it lacks characters with heart-on-their-sleeve humanity like he shows us in “ The Fighter ” or “ Silver Linings Playbook .” Despite the prodigious talent on display here, not a single figure on screen feels like a real person. Each is a collection of idiosyncrasies, some more intriguing than others.

To put it in the simplest terms possible, Bale and Washington play longtime best friends suspected of a murder they didn’t commit. While trying to uncover the truth about what’s going on, they stumble upon an even larger and more sinister plot. Russell’s script jumps around in time from 1933 New York to 1918 Amsterdam and back again, but he’s using this time frame—and the fascist ideologies that rose to prominence then—to make a statement about what’s been going on the past several years in right-wing American politics. Ultimately, he hammers us over the head with this point. But first, whimsy.

Bale’s Burt Berendsen is a folksy doctor with a glass eye that keeps falling out. He’s hooked on his own homemade pain meds, which cause him to collapse to the ground—which also causes his eye to fall out. Bale is doing intense shtick throughout; he is committed to the bit. Washington’s Harold Woodman served with him in the same racially mixed Army battalion in France during WWI; he’s now an attorney, and the more levelheaded of the two. When their beloved general dies suspiciously, his daughter (a distractingly stiff Taylor Swift ) asks them to investigate.

But soon, they’re on the run, inspiring a flashback to how they met in the first place. This is actually the most entertaining part of the film. Russell luxuriates in the duo’s wistful memories of their post-war years in Amsterdam with Robbie’s Valerie Voze, the nurse who cared for them when they were injured and quickly became their co-conspirator in all kinds of boozy escapades. The celebrated cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki , a multiple Oscar winner for his work with Alfonso Cuaron (“ Gravity ”) and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (“ Birdman ,” “ The Revenant ”), eases up on the sepia tones that often feel so smothering in an effort to capture a feeling of nostalgia. There’s real life and joy to these sequences in Amsterdam that’s missing elsewhere. Robbie, a brunette for a change, looks impossibly luminous—but her character is also a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, a secretly wealthy heiress who turns bullet shrapnel into art. It’s a heavy-handed metaphor for the healing presence she provides in Burt and Harold’s lives.

That’s what’s so frustrating about “Amsterdam”: It’ll offer a scene or an interaction or a performance here or there that’s legitimately entertaining and maybe comes close to hitting the mark Russell is trying to hit. Several duos and subplots along the way might have made for a more interesting movie than the one we got: Malek and Taylor-Joy as Valerie’s snobby, striving brother and sister-in-law, for example, are a bizarre hoot. (And here’s a great place to stop and mention the spectacular costume design, the work of J.R. Hawbaker and the legendary Albert Wolsky . The period detail is varied and vivid, but the dresses Taylor-Joy wears, all in bold shades of red, are especially inspired.) Nivola and Matthias Schoenaerts as mismatched cops who can’t stand each other can be amusing, and it seems like they’re really trying to infuse their characters with traits and motivations beyond what’s on the page. Shannon and Mike Myers as a pair of spies are good for a goofy laugh or two, nothing more.

But despite these sporadic moments of enjoyment, “Amsterdam” is ultimately so convoluted and tedious that it obliterates such glimmers of goodwill. It’s so weighed down by its overlong running time and self-indulgent sense of importance that its core message about the simple need for human decency feels like a cynical afterthought. And whispering the word “Amsterdam” throughout, as several of the characters do, doesn’t even begin to cast the magic spell it seeks to conjure.

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Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Film credits.

Amsterdam (2022)

Rated R for brief violence and bloody images.

127 minutes

Christian Bale as Burt Berendsen

Margot Robbie as Valerie Voze

John David Washington as Harold Woodman

Robert De Niro as General Gil Dillenbeck

Anya Taylor-Joy as Libby Voze

Rami Malek as Tom Voze

Chris Rock as Milton King

Zoe Saldaña as Irma St. Clair

Mike Myers as Paul Canterbury

Michael Shannon as Henry Norcross

Timothy Olyphant as Taron Milfax

Andrea Riseborough as Beatrice Vandenheuvel

Taylor Swift as Liz Meekins

Matthias Schoenaerts as Detective Lem Getweiler

Alessandro Nivola as Detective Hiltz

Ed Begley Jr. as General Bill Meekins

David O. Russell

Cinematographer

Emmanuel Lubezki
Jay Cassidy
Daniel Pemberton

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Amsterdam Reviews

David O. Russell’s latest outing is a glibly entertaining caper completely undone by its self-importance.

Full Review | Nov 2, 2023

While there has been some criticism about the plot being too busy and trying to say too many things, part of Amsterdam's charm is its "everything, everywhere, all at once" vibe.

Full Review | Oct 4, 2023

Despite being based in fact, the story ends up being rather bland and the movie becomes more about being a way to spotlight the actors.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Aug 9, 2023

It's not just the wonky pacing, but that it forever feels like none of it lands the way it's supposed to. It's like a song with a beautifully formed melody played over a rhythm section that can't keep even basic time.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 7, 2023

While Amsterdam was undoubtedly enjoyable to film for its many costars, the merriment doesn't quite translate to the screen. The plethora of side characters and celebrity cameos becomes confusing for a plot that is already too elaborate.

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

Really dug the friendship element & honestly if it wasn’t for Bale, Robbie, Washington & Joy I probably would have dipped out on the film as the direction/story itself was all held together by strings

David O Russell's latest - a shaggy dog mystery with a deliberate air of penny dreadfuls - could do with more straightforward narrative and fewer screwball convolutions

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Mar 17, 2023

The down-your-throat optimism at the end of Amsterdam is certainly not the vehicle this film needed for any sort of entertaining climax. I've got plenty of other places to be preached to.

Full Review | Feb 15, 2023

Amsterdam wastes its immensely talented cast and a hefty budget on an unconvincing script and meandering storytelling.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 10, 2023

A disappointment of epic proportions.

Full Review | Jan 31, 2023

Amsterdam presents itself as a work of collaborative trust (thematically, but also formally, but also philosophically) so that discrete sections which threaten to strain credulity on their own, feel woven together with care and thoughtfulness.

Full Review | Jan 30, 2023

It’s by no means a perfect movie and has plenty of forgettable moments, but Amsterdam is certainly entertaining and that’s enough for me.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Jan 4, 2023

Although the production, costume, hair and makeup design are outstanding, the material never rises to the superb level of its all star cast.

Full Review | Jan 1, 2023

I wouldn’t have missed the pro-democracy speeches that overwhelm Amsterdam in the end, had they been tacked back, but despite Russell’s strenuous efforts, you actually can’t have everything.

Full Review | Dec 24, 2022

The nearly impossible narrative is not quick witted let alone charming enough to be in the same vein as Preston Sturges or Ernst Lubitsch.

Full Review | Original Score: D | Dec 10, 2022

A kooky piece of messy Americana, but it’s enjoyable enough to make you appreciate the cast and craft.

Full Review | Dec 6, 2022

It looks beautiful and Daniel Pemberton ("Motherless Brooklyn"/"The Bad Guys") provides another great score, but it’s all set dressing on a film one never really connects with in a meaning way.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 5, 2022

By some miracle, wasting your time may be the least of the director’s crimes against humanity.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10 | Nov 30, 2022

A rather boring film that, behind the curtain of political conspiracies, mixes genres uselessly and seems to be the product of a disjointed assemblage at the service of seedy characters who only spend their time talking nonsense. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10 | Nov 24, 2022

An overstuffed, muddled, historical 1930s fantasy period romantic comedy-thriller that dazzles.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Nov 16, 2022

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‘Amsterdam’ Is a Throwback, a Warning — and a Beautiful, All-Star Mess

By David Fear

Name an actor — almost any working actor you can think of — and there is a fairly good chance they are in David O. Russell ‘s Amsterdam. Christian Bale , the intense thespian who’s done his best work with the equally all-or-nothing-at-all auteur? No surprise that he’s front and center here. Ditto Russell rep-company regular Robert De Niro . Rising star John David Washington ? Yup, him too. Margot Robbie and Anya Taylor-Joy , both current candidates for “It girl” status circa 2022? Present and accounted for. How about Chris Rock , or Rami Malek , or Zoe Saldana, Michael Shannon , Mike Myers , Timothy Olyphant, Andrea Riseborough, Ed Begley Jr., Alessandro Nivola, and [ checks notes ] Taylor Swift ? They’re in the cast as well. This isn’t an ensemble film, it’s a SAG meeting.

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Cut to: 1918. A younger, more innocent (and dual-eyed) Berendsen has no sooner joined the effort to fight the Kaiser when he’s asked to oversee an all-Black squad of doughboys. They’ve been accused of insubordination because the brass doesn’t want them wearing American uniforms. This is where Burt meets Harold, both of whom end up convalescing in a French hospital after sustaining battlefield injuries.

There’s more — dear lord, a lot more — as Russell takes us down an American history wormhole of fifth columnists, political chicanery and the rancid rich. An opening disclaimer informs us that “a lot of this actually happened,” and it does not take a college professor to measure the distance between the past threats to the democratic ideals we hold near and dear and what our current future may bring in light of the past few years. (Homegrown Nazis — now more than ever!) You couldn’t be blamed for thinking the filmmaker might be mounting a call to arms cloaked in period duds, especially when the voiceover dips into the didactic during a third-act showdown between the clearly drawn good guys and the corrupt. (“What could be more American than a dictatorship built by American business?”) The commentary nudging is actually the least effective aspect of Amsterdam, not because it isn’t pertinent or that Russell doesn’t share the same concerns many of us do, so much as the fact that his heart clearly lies elsewhere.

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The generosity extends to the cast at large. Some have issues with Washington’s somewhat recessive take on Goodman, legal eagle and lover of Robbie’s aristocratic kook. But when seen in tandem with what Bale is doing, it fits the bigger picture better — he’s the ballast that allows Bale to boing off him and bounce around the sets. Robbie understands that her third party is one part daffy-dame screwball archetype and one part romantic ideal, yet doesn’t let herself be confined by either role. The supporting cast either gets to play very straight (De Niro’s patriotic military man, Swift’s grieving young woman), very broad (Riseborough’s elitist wife, Olyphant’s racist thug) or take part in wonderfully oddball double acts (Shannon and Myers intelligence-agency handlers, Nivola and Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts’ dim-witted cops; Malek and Taylor-Joy’s unscrupulous One-percenters). It would be unkind to note that not all performers are equal here. It would also be accurate.

And then there’s Amsterdam itself, the city that acts as a sort of symbolic title in the same way that Casablanca does for its classic ensemble drama. It’s the paradise lost, the moment before history and “the dream” repeats themselves. It’s what Robbie calls “the good part,” when these three can be what they call “their true selves.” It’s the geographical representation of a deep, lasting, sustaining friendship. And much like Casablanca, this movie will end with a sacrifice that attempts to right a handful of wrongs on both a macro- and a micro-level. There is no shortage of movies that still traffic in shameless, manipulative uplift (see: this year’s Oscar winner ). Yet Russell, to his everlasting credit, has made a film in which having cockeyed optimism, at this moment in the world, somehow feels like a radical act. For a movie that is all over the place, it’s determination to get back to a bygone moment isn’t just wishful thinking. It suggests, in own roundabout way, that a return to the past can also signal the beginning of a fresh start.

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“Amsterdam” Is an Exemplary Work of Resistance Cinema

By Richard Brody

Christian Bale Margot Robbie and John David Washington in “Amsterdam.”

It’s tempting to say that I found David O. Russell’s new film, “ Amsterdam ,” a hoot and a half, and be done with it. But there’s much more to this exuberant movie, in substance and in style. It’s a historical fantasy that is written and acted like a comedic tall tale, but it’s all the more remarkable for its solid (albeit slender) basis in reality. It also takes its place in a recent, odd but significant subgenre of movies that has cropped up in response to the authoritarian and hate-filled deeds and rhetoric of the Trump era: resistance cinema. It would be easy to mock the very notion as a form of highly selective crowd-pleasing, were many of these movies, including “Amsterdam,” not among the most emotionally committed and aesthetically distinctive films of the times.

The international cinema of resistance has a venerable history, and is ongoing (as in Jafar Panahi ’s “ No Bears ”); in recent years, prominent American filmmakers, whether or not their work has often had a political dimension, have responded to the rise of the far right and related tenets and syndromes. I’m thinking of such films as Paul Schrader’s “ First Reformed ” and “ The Card Counter ,” Spike Lee’s “ BlacKkKlansman ,” Eliza Hittman’s “ Never Rarely Sometimes Always ,” Jim Jarmusch’s “ The Dead Don’t Die ,” Frederick Wiseman’s “ Monrovia, Indiana ,” Shatara Michelle Ford’s “ Test Pattern ,” Josh and Benny Safdie’s “ Good Time ,” Ricky D’Ambrose’s “ Notes on an Appearance ,” Olivia Wilde’s “ Don’t Worry Darling ” (really), Matt Porterfield’s “ Sollers Point ,” the late Lynn Shelton’s “ Sword of Trust ,” and James Gray’s forthcoming “ Armageddon Time .” I consider Charlie Chaplin to be the primordial figure of resistance cinema—most prominently, with “ The Great Dictator ”—and that film is the prime cinematic spirit inhabiting “Amsterdam.”

In “Amsterdam,” Russell confronts the real-life so-called Business Plot. In the early days of Franklin Roosevelt’s first Administration, a group of executives sought to leverage the anger of veterans who hadn’t received due benefits under his predecessor, Herbert Hoover, in order to install, as an adviser-cum-dictator, General Smedley Butler—who, they assumed, would do their bidding. (Instead, Butler exposed the plot, testifying to Congress about it.) In “Amsterdam,” Russell (who wrote and directed the film) rosencrantzes and guildensterns that conspiracy, to high purpose: he focusses on a fictional trio who stumble on that plot and then attempt to thwart it. Russell gives these characters a magnificent backstory in order to unfold the character traits and the strange circumstances (both ludicrous and logical) that crystallize their spirit of resistance into determination and action—that transform three insulted and injured obscurities into protagonists of history.

The deliciously intricate story begins in Manhattan, in 1933, in the form of a whirligig whodunnit. A plastic surgeon, Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale), who is also a grievously wounded Great War veteran, practices in Harlem with the self-appointed mission to aid similarly scarred veterans. He shares space with an attorney, Harold Woodman (John David Washington), who is his best friend and also a seriously wounded veteran, and who served under him in the Great War. Burt, an Army medic, was appointed by the fair-minded, honorable General Bill Meekins (Ed Begley, Jr.) to take over from a cruel racist as the commander of the all-Black 369th Regiment, then fighting in France. When Meekins, newly home from Europe, suddenly dies, his daughter Liz (Taylor Swift) recruits Harold to arrange for the autopsy. Working with a medical examiner named Irma St. Clair (Zoe Saldaña), Burt concludes that Meekins was murdered; then another body turns up, Burt and Harold are falsely accused of that killing, and, in order to clear their names, they need someone from high society to vouch for them. That quest carries them through the upper-crust Voze family—notably, Tom (Rami Malek), an ineffectual bird-watcher with a Kennedy accent—to another general, Gil Dillenbeck (Robert De Niro), Meekins’s best friend and the only person who was privy to Meekins’s activities in Europe before his voyage home.

The character who—as seen in a series of flashbacks—joins Burt and Harold to round out the trio during wartime is Valerie (Margot Robbie), a military nurse and an artist who, in a military hospital in France, saves the two men, forges a deep friendship with both and a romance with Harold, and keeps the shrapnel from both men’s bodies to use in her art work. She brings the men to Amsterdam; there, she connects Burt, who lost an eye, to a master glass-eye craftsman named Paul Canterbury (Mike Myers), who’s also a British spy in partnership with Henry Norcross (Michael Shannon), an American one. Harold and Valerie (whose background is vague and whose identity is elusive) vow to stay in Amsterdam, since their interracial romance has no hope in the United States. In 1919, Burt returns home to New York and to his wife, Beatrice (Andrea Riseborough), the daughter of Park Avenue snobs, the Vandenheuvels, who had ordered the half-Jewish, half-Catholic Burt to war to bring home medals and thereby win the acceptance of their set. But, when Burt, upon returning to medical practice with his father-in-law, insists on treating Black veterans, the Vandenheuvels—Beatrice with them—kick him out. Then, in the early nineteen-twenties, Harold leaves Valerie in Amsterdam and returns to the U.S., graduating from Columbia Law School, setting up shop with Burt in Harlem, and fulfilling his dream of helping veterans in need. In 1933, when Harold and Burt get caught up in the Meekins case together, Valerie turns up again and joins forces with them to try to solve the murders. In the process, they discover a conspiracy of American plutocrats to install Dillenbeck as dictator, and they turn to Paul and Henry for help, to grandly dramatic effect.

Even a detailed description of the Rube Goldberg-esque plot can’t do justice to the zinging action and the manifest delight that Russell takes in bringing it to life. Leaping around in time, tipping in a trio of voice-overs, truffling the soundtrack with hyperbolic aphorisms, adding fantasy sequences, Russell realizes the tale in performances as delicately nuanced as they are fiercely expressive, and, together with the cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, conjures images that whirl and gyrate; the camera presses under the characters’ chins and watches them cock their heads insolently, glides with sly glints of discovery, and fills the screen with brusque action and finely emphasized subtleties. The movie is full of felicities that manage to be, at the same time, poignantly earnest and giddily inventive, as when Burt, heading off to perform the autopsy while bearing a bouquet for the estranged Beatrice, witnesses another killing, flees the killers and the police, and reaches a safe hiding place while still grasping the flowers; or when Burt, resetting Irma’s broken wrist, gives rise to the film’s most breathtakingly rapturous moment. The literary archness of the dialogue yields an incantatory set of street-smart poetic refrains, whether in the studied diction of Burt, the pensive manner of Harold, the incisive tone used by Valerie, or the hectic yet fiercely serious manner of Harold’s assistant and fellow-veteran, Milton (Chris Rock), whether challenging someone who “followed the wrong god home” or asserting the dangers posed to two Black men by “a dead white man in a box.”

Russell does more than fill the film with its high-wattage parade of stars, who energize the proceedings from beginning to end. He creates vivid and forceful characters—slightly heightened caricatures whose unnaturally emphatic presences befit the air of serendipity that gives history the oddball heroes it needs, and that gives them the happy ending they deserve. Shannon does comedy worthily alongside Myers, who lends his whimsy an apt gravity; Rock combines intense self-awareness in substance with unhinged impulsiveness in bearing. Matthias Schoenaerts brings tense dignity to the role of a detective whose war wounds match Burt’s but whose job brings the two men into conflict. Alessandro Nivola channels James Caan as a policeman who compensates cruelly for the drubbing that his self-image takes as a noncombatant owing to flat feet. Anya Taylor-Joy brings curdled chipperness to the role of Libby Voze, Tom’s blithely arrogant wife, and Riseborough flutteringly fluctuates almost to the vanishing point as a young woman caught between parents and husband.

The lead actors’ performances draw a wide range of moods and tones from the movie’s antic exaggerations. Washington adds a sheen of brashly confident gaiety to Harold’s sombre composure. Robbie delivers her best performance to date, incarnating Valerie with a lighthearted lilt and a distinctively dancelike element of deft physical comedy that belies the sacrifices demanded by her creative fervor, romantic passion, and drive for independence. Bale delivers a strange, recklessly great performance—the definition of which is that it’s almost bad. He glowers and barks, tilts his head with a skeptical insolence, and pops his eyes (his eye) with a hectic intensity—it’s a comedic performance by a non-comedian that centers and suffuses the film with his wildly charismatic presence.

As for De Niro, he channels the vague incongruity of his New York-ishness into a parsed, didactic manner (akin to Rupert Pupkin’s, in “ The King of Comedy ”) to suggest, with a dry, elevated, and entirely self-aware reserve, the immense burden placed on him by the conspirators, and the incommensurable distance that all that the general has seen and done in war places between him and pretty much everyone else he meets. Fittingly, this enduring hero of the modern cinema gets the crucially Chaplinesque role when his character, Dillenbeck, is chosen to give a nationally broadcast speech at a military reunion gala, a scene that proves reminiscent of the climactic one in “The Great Dictator.”

Yet the flashing and lurching energies of “Amsterdam,” with its richly imagined scenes developed deeply, even overwhelmingly, in detail, are held together by more than the convoluted plot’s witty and fanciful logic. “Amsterdam” is, above all, a movie of ideas, which serve as a magnetic core, organizing disparate pieces and tones into a firm and decisive pattern. Russell’s cinematic sensibility is galvanized and tautened by the power of these ideas—and by his principled motivation to depict them in action. Despite its comedic tone, “Amsterdam” takes seriously the torn and cut and shattered bodies of people in war, and the pain that they endure long afterward, even when they’ve recovered a measure of apparent normalcy. By way of Valerie’s art work, and the response that it gets from philistines of dubious politics, the film dramatizes the role of even frivolous-seeming and sardonically arch art in embodying the agonies of war’s victims. “Amsterdam” is a drama of a country and a world shaken to their very foundations by the incurable traumas of war.

“Amsterdam” is also centered on the dominant, absurd, and pervasive racism and discrimination of American society, and the film emphasizes its historical inspiration of actual, international Nazism. (It’s worth noting the cinematic echo here of Gordon Parks, Jr.,’s 1974 film “Three the Hard Way,” in regard to a harrowing plot point involving Nazi racist monstrosities in the U.S.) Russell overtly and insistently links white supremacy to anti-Semitism and to misogyny—to the conspiratorial, underhanded suppression of women’s bodily autonomy. He sees the arrogant avarice of American business leaders as cavalierly indifferent to democracy, wantonly selling out the country's institutions and freedoms to the interests of foreign tyrants, whose practices and policies they seek to install here. He shows the untroubled ease with which willful, corrupt, and self-interested media ideologues intentionally and uninhibitedly pollute the civic environment at large and bend the minds of the vulnerable masses, whose social burdens and political frustrations are the results of policies and leaders promoted by the selfsame media. He recognizes the contempt for art, the hostility to culture, as a fundamental marker of this nexus of hatred and oppression. Above all, he sees a country sickened by its own cruelty, feeding on itself, proving its own monstrosity by imposing on private lives and obliterating the fundamental virtue and value of romantic, sexual love. May “Amsterdam” ’s melodramatic sentimentality be forgiven; not many films of such exuberance, since the time of Chaplin, have been fuelled by such rage. ♦

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Amsterdam Review

04 Nov 2022

At one point in Amsterdam , there is a scene involving (deep breath) Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington. Remi Malek, Anya Taylor-Joy, Robert De Niro, Chris Rock, Mike Myers, Michael Shannon, Matthias Schoenaerts and Alessandro Nivola. Perhaps the single most stacked-with-talent scene in 2022, it points to one of the problems with David O. Russell ’s sprawling, intermittently enjoyable film: it is simultaneously over-stuffed and under-nourished. It proffers ambitious filmmaking, full of strong craft, great bits and big thematic swings but Amsterdam never really catches fire and fails to amount to more than the sum of its occasionally impressive parts.

Amsterdam opens with the title card: ‘A lot of this really happened’, mostly referring to a little-known dark chapter of US history — an elaborate political coup conspiracy — that emerges in the film’s second half. Before it gets to that, Russell’s script is a mash-up of different sub-genres — crime flick, Hawksian screwball comedy, two-guys-and-a-girl movie — that never finds the right tenor to unify its whackier and more sober elements. It’s at its most fun when, in a lengthy flashback, it etches the friendship between doctor Burt ( Christian Bale ), lawyer Harold ( John David Washington ) and nurse Valerie ( Margot Robbie ), evoking a freewheeling, capricious Jules Et Jim vibe.

Neither serious enough to be sharp satire, nor energetic enough to deliver exuberant farce.

This idealistic, sweet quality ultimately can’t survive in an over-complicated murder plot that blows up into something bigger. Russell wants to use it to make comments about contemporary America (clue: standing up to fascists) but it’s neither serious enough to be sharp satire, nor energetic enough to deliver exuberant farce.

The central trio are winningly played, if thinly drawn, Bale and Robbie’s characters boasting an over-abundance of quirks (him: a false eye that keeps falling out, a penchant for experimenting with meds; her: pipe-smoking, making sculpture out of shrapnel) whereas Washington is somewhat flavourless by comparison. The supporting cast, from Malek and Taylor-Joy’s social-climbers to Myers and Shannon’s bird-watching spies, register without being especially memorable. Taylor Swift gets an instantly meme-able moment. It’s left to Russell regular De Niro, playing a comrade of the murdered General, to provide an anchor for the wayward proceedings.

The Russell film it most resembles is American Hustle , sharing its flamboyance and broad scope, not to mention great costumes — take a bow J.R. Hawbaker and the legendary Albert Wolsky. From production designer Judy Becker’s recreations of ‘30s New York to cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s gorgeous, fluid, sepia-tinged images, Amsterdam is a treat to look at. It is also a delight to listen to, Daniel Pemberton’s score adding lightness and much-needed urgency, mainly through woodwind action. It’s a shame, then, that such technical proficiency couldn’t align to better-judged storytelling. Amsterdam wants to celebrate love, humanity and kindness in the messy tapestry of life. It just needed more care and control in weaving the threads.

Movies | 10 02 2023

Movies | 06 07 2022

Amsterdam (2022)

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‘Amsterdam’ Review: Three Amigos Try to Save America in David O. Russell’s Ungainly Period Dramedy

Truth is relative as Christian Bale, John David Washington and Margot Robbie stumble upon a plot to overturn democracy in this overstuffed social satire from the director of 'American Hustle.'

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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Reviewed at AMC Century City, Los Angeles, Sept. 19, 2022. MPA Rating: R. Running time: 134 MIN.

Production: A 20th Century Studios release of a Regency Enterprises presentation of a New Regency, Dreamcrew Entertainment, Keep Your Head, Corazon Camera production. Producers: Arnon Milchan, Matthew Budman, Anthony Katagas, David O. Russell, Christian Bale. Executive producers: Yariv Milchan, Michael Schaefer, Sam Hanson, Drake, Adel "Future" Nur. Co-producer: Tracey Landon.
Crew: Director, writer: David O. Russell. Camera: Emmanuel Lubezki. Editor: Jay Cassidy. Music: Daniel Pemberton.
With: Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Alessandro Nivola, Andrea Riseborough, Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Rock, Matthias Schoenaerts, Michael Shannon, Mike Myers, Taylor Swift, Timothy Olyphant, Zoe Saldaña, Rami Malek, Robert De Niro.

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Amsterdam review: David O. Russell's muddled comedy is all stars and shenanigans

Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, and dozens more populate an odd shaggy-dog mystery.

There are no small actors in Amsterdam , just a blizzard of stars and wham-bam cameos — Chris Rock , Mike Myers , Taylor Swift — dancing as fast as they can to the beat of David O. Russell 's strained, hectic, and often inscrutable caper (in theaters Oct. 7). It's impossible to say whether the movie, based on a real-life plot to overthrow the U.S. government, is meant to be a comedy, a murder mystery, or maybe even a thwarted musical; more than once, the characters on screen do break into song. But it feels like a lot of fanfare and celebrity flop sweat to invest in the film's minimal returns, and a peculiar swerve for Russell after a seven-year absence from the screen. (Following the full-court blitz of The Fighter , Silver Linings Playbook , and American Hustle , his last project was the deceptively-named Jennifer Lawrence home-shopping biopic Joy , in 2015.)

It's early-1930s Manhattan, more or less, and best friends Burt Berendsen ( Christian Bale ) and Harold Woodsman ( John David Washington ) still bear the marks of their time together in the trenches of WWI — Burt, with his glass eye and back full of shrapnel scars, Harold with a deep gash across his otherwise unblemished jawline. One day a damsel in distress (Swift) bursts into Burt's office, insisting that the recent death of her war-hero father, Senator Bill Meekins ( Ed Begley Jr. ), did not come by natural causes, and that only this motley duo, both former soldiers under his command, can crack the case. Not that either of them are P.I.s: Burt's a nebbishy doctor whose origins and outer-borough accent belie his Park Avenue address — he's there by marriage to a high-strung debutante ( Andrea Riseborough ) from whom he's already estranged — and Harold is an attorney whose degree from Columbia Law doesn't tend to mean much when a beat cop sees the color of his skin.

But they're both doing their best — with the help of a sympathetic friend in the coroner's office ( Zoe Saldaña ) and Harold's less-than-enthused legal associate (Rock) — to track down the root of what turns out to be a vast conspiracy, when they themselves becomes suspects. With two not particularly bright NYPD detectives ( Matthias Schoenaerts and Alessandro Nivola ) in pursuit, the pair makes their way to the country home of a well-connected aristocrat named Tom Voze ( Rami Malek ) and his blonde-whippet wife, Libby ( Anya Taylor-Joy ), hoping they might hold a clue. There's another surprise waiting for them there: Tom's sister, Valerie ( Margot Robbie ), once a combat nurse and undercover bohemian, now an involuntary shut-in on this vast estate. Back on the battlefields of Europe, she was Burt and Harold's favorite coconspirator, and also Harold's lover; together, they had a wild run in post-war Amsterdam before the social and economic realities of life brought their dreamy Dutch idyll to an end.

The reunion of their little gang is the movie's obligatory cue for high jinks, and they do ensue, through several elaborate set pieces that involve another decorated General ( Robert De Niro , who barely seems to bother with his line readings), and multiple flashbacks to the good old times. Bale, his eyes maniacally wide and hair mildly electrified, feels like a nervy ancestor to Irving Rosenfeld, the swaggering con-man he played in American Hustle . He's too good an actor not to make his bow-tied agitator Burt entertain, and Washington brings a suave, soulful counterbalance. Myers and Michael Shannon are suitably surreal as a pair of eccentric intelligence agents chewing their little bits of scenery into a fine pulp, and there's an unexpected pleasure in hearing Malek delightedly roll the words "graham cracker" across his tongue. The production and costume design are, unsurprisingly, impeccable. But the resolution of the central mystery is both rushed and obtuse, and it all unfolds in a frenetic, flailing whirl of pomp and nonsense that Amsterdam 's strange circuitous journey and almost embarrassing surplus of stars never quite justifies: a whirring music-box curiosity in search of some elusive purpose, and a point. Grade: C+

Amsterdam Should Feel Intoxicating, But It’s Exhausting

How we deal with our brokenness is the idea not so secretly at the center of most of David O. Russell’s films. In Amsterdam , he’s conjured up perhaps his most overt treatment of the subject: It opens with images of physical wounds and scars, and as the film proceeds, we realize how spiritually broken the characters are as well. Our ostensible hero is Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale), a doctor who specializes in “fixing up banged-up guys like myself” — veterans of the First World War who struggle with missing limbs and faces, “all injuries the world was happy to forget.” The year is 1933, and a new war is on the horizon, but Burt will always be defined by the last one, whose marks he carries on multiple levels: He lost his eye and part of his cheek, wears a back brace, and now is constantly on the lookout for the latest advances in mind-altering medicine to get him through the day.

Many wounds loom over Amsterdam , but the film moves with the devil-may-care verve of a comic romp. Burt and his lawyer friend Harold Woodman (John David Washington) get yanked into a bizarre mystery involving the death of a senator and beloved ex-general, which the man’s daughter (Taylor Swift) suspects to be murder. Pulled into the shenanigans is gorgeous artist Valerie (Margot Robbie), whom Burt and Harold last saw in Amsterdam many years ago: In an extended flashback, we see the blissfully hedonistic idyll the three of them lived in the years after the war when Harold and Valerie were madly in love, Valerie was making beautiful shrapnel-art, and Burt had not yet returned to New York to resume his toxic marriage to the wealthy Beatrice Vandenheuvel (Andrea Riseborough). A yearning to return to the Eden of Amsterdam animates these characters.

It’d be easy to get bogged down with the story of Amsterdam , which manages to be heavily adorned with incident and character but not particularly elaborate, despite a couple of twists at the end. At its heart, the film wants to be a hangout movie. Russell loves to fill his casts with big names — this one includes Robert De Niro, Chris Rock, Anya Taylor-Joy, Zoe Saldaña, and Rami Malek, among many others — not because he needs them to get the movies financed (though I’m sure it helps) but because he clearly loves to give actors space to strut. And strut they do. Bale’s commedia dell’arte antics contrast nicely with Washington’s straight-man stylings, while Robbie seems to be in a constant state of transformation, from French nurse to American bohemian to New York socialite, perhaps embodying the existential restlessness of the period between the wars. Michael Shannon and Mike Myers show up as a couple of spies. Alessandro Nivola and Matthias Schoenaerts show up as a couple of cops. I could happily watch entire movies about some of these side characters.

Russell’s style is one I would call aggressive empathy : He insists on reminding us that everybody lives their own life, but his films aren’t patient or generous in the ways we associate with empathy. If Jean Renoir’s famous dictum that “everyone has their reasons” was, in that director’s eyes, a gentle but melancholy truth about the world, Russell seems to regard that same reality with alternating shockwaves of wonder and horror. His movies are both indulgent celebrations of and anxious nightmares about the fact that other people exist.

Amsterdam is filled with slapstick, wordplay, proto-musical numbers, and moments of broad, actorly abandon — so much so that, despite the fact that the story often feels like it’s on a predictable path, you never know if the movie itself will just stop and go in a completely different direction. Whenever it’s operating on that edge of uncertainty, the picture works marvelously. But the freewheeling freewheeling-ness can get to you after a while. As it accumulates running time (and characters and plot points), Amsterdam starts to get exhausting when it should perhaps feel liberating or intoxicating.

And Russell has difficulty tying everything up. For all its shaggy-dog qualities — and this should come as no surprise given the setting, the characters, and the premise — Amsterdam ’s tale is leading to something profound. It has big, timely points to make about spiritual injury, the specter of war, longing for lost utopias, and the rise of fascism. By the time the picture starts to lock back into its story, however, you might realize that it has become a totally different movie. A more serious movie but not necessarily a better one. Still, at least we had Amsterdam.

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Amsterdam Goes For Wokeness Over Substance

David O. Russell's latest film is giving me flashbacks of that video of A-list celebrities singing “Imagine” to us over Zoom.

preview for Amsterdam official trailer (20th Century Fox)

Amsterdam, David O. Russell's first film in over seven years, begins with a title card that explains what people have come to be familiar with in true-story films, telling us, "a lot of this really happened." What the audience learns after, however, is that not only did most of what you just saw arguably never occur, but the big scandal itself may have never even taken place at all. You don’t get the answer to one of America’s best-kept political secrets at Amsterdam 's end . You mostly just get tricked into learning what this crime caper has covertly been leading toward this entire time.

The story begins with Dr. Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale), a half-Jewish, half-Christian Manhattanite who treats veterans and has a wonky glass eye from his own tour of service in World War I. He's clearly a guy who never could have existed in real life—or if he did, he couldn't have had anything to do with this story. For all the nonsense that ensues in Amsterdam , Bale is the film's one shining beacon of hope. He's fully committed to his character, as opposed to some of his castmates, and his slapstick comedic timing is one of Amsterdam 's only saving graces. Like a reluctant noir detective, he's constantly jostled around and thrown to the ground, occasionally having to paw around for his lost eye like Velma's glasses in Scooby-Doo .

War buddy Harold Woodman (John David Washington) calls and informs him that their former army general, Senator Bill Meekins (a corpse-like Ed Begley Jr.) has been murdered. The Senator's daughter, Elizabeth (Taylor Swift), contacts Burt to perform a secret autopsy. Yes, the mega-pop star is here for two scenes—one of which will surely be memed out of existence. After another murder takes place, the gang becomes suspects in a larger political scandal. A long, impossible-to-solve-yourself plot occurs over the course of the film, wherein every new character you meet is an instantly recognizable celebrity. (Cue: Margot Robbie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Remi Malek, Zoe Saldaña, Mike Myers, Chris Rock, Michael Shannon, and Timothy Olyphant). Eventually, all roads lead to retired General Gil Dillenbeck (Robert De Niro). He's a decorated veteran based on real-life figure Major General Smedley Butler, who spoke about late payments from the Great Depression during what is known as the 1932 Bonus Army march on Washington. It's the first time in Amsterdam that I was certain we got to something that actually took place in American history.

It may have taken forever to get here after galavanting in an Amsterdam war hospital and a wealthy businessman's estate, but this is when the film finally gets to why David O. Russell seemingly made the damn thing. You see, a bunch of old-timey business tycoons allegedly planned to take over the government and replace then-ill President Franklin D. Roosevelt with a puppet dictator. They want to pay the General a large sum of money to give a big speech at Doctor Burt's annual veteran's event in support of their fascist cause, but ol' De Niro just can't do it. Instead, he gives a rousing speech about the need to uphold truth, democracy, and freedom. Surprise! The ending of the film is nothing more than that video of A-list celebrities singing “Imagine” to us over Zoom .

Clearly, David O. Russell is another creative who saw Trump become the President, lost his mind, and then gathered as many celebrities as he could to defend one of the most agreeable stances in the history of the world: that hate is bad and kindness is good. It's the kind of lukewarm, on-the-nose take that elicited audible groans throughout the theater. Amsterdam wasn't an interesting murder mystery with a rewarding payoff. It was just the closest thing in American history that David O. Russell could find that mimicked the January 6 insurrection. "You don't get here without things starting a long time ago," Bale's Dr. Burt says.

Known as the 1934 "Business Plot," Major Gen. Smedley Butler really did give an address to a special House committee regarding his belief that a small cabal of wealthy businessmen was plotting a political conspiracy to install a dictator. He said that they were backed by a private army of nearly 500,000 veterans and that he was asked to lead it. The only problem? It seemed that no one was really interested in that happening. After General Butler gave his testimony, every party allegedly involved called the plot a complete fantasy. Nothing ever happened, the special House committee couldn't find any evidence of a planned coup, and an independent investigation by The New York Times concluded just as much as well. In a 1934 article titled " Plot Without Plotters ," Times journalists mocked that " No military officer of the U. S. since the late, tempestuous George Custer has succeeded in publicly floundering in so much hot water as Smedley Darlington Butler." Ouch!

But the "what-if" of the General's allegations describes what many believe could have also been the "what-if" of the U.S. Capitol attack, even though neither event came even close to accomplishing its goal. If audiences are going to Amsterdam to look for artistic takes on the current state of the world, "we need more love and kindness" is quite a layman’s response—especially from some of the world's most recognizable celebrities. As filmmaker Paul Schrader said at a recent New York Film Festival Q&A , audiences are simply just not as excited to hear movies work through the problems of our time as they might have been during the anti-war movement or social revolutions of the '60s and '70s.

Why? Maybe because those problems have still not been solved some 60 years later. Most people no longer go to the movies for “takes,” but to escape reality entirely. Hell, most people no longer even really go to the movies. There’s a reason why the leader of the Avengers—a superhero literally named Captain America—fought a big purple monster in space instead of giving oratories on why we should protect American freedom at all costs. You could argue that kindness is seemingly the message this world still needs, sure. But Christian Bale's character going into self-induced ecstasy because his two best friends are in an interracial relationship does not help the bare-bones wokeness similar films fail to make even just a little more nuanced. Even so, the down-your-throat optimism at the end of Amsterdam is certainly not the vehicle this film needed for any sort of entertaining climax. I've got plenty of other places to be preached to.

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clock This article was published more than 1 year ago

‘Amsterdam’: True-ish shaggy-dog tale from 1933 (with echoes of 2022)

Christian Bale, John David Washington and Margot Robbie headline a film that’s equal parts fact and fiction

“A lot of this actually happened” is the opening epigram of “Amsterdam,” David O. Russell’s kaleidoscopic riff on the curious case of Gen. Smedley Butler, who in 1933 became involved in what would be known as the Business Plot, wherein he was allegedly approached by a cabal of wealthy business executives to be the figurehead for an attempted coup in which they were planning to overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Russell’s fantastical take on the episode, in which he mixes fact and fiction with extravagant abandon, can’t be called a success. It’s too scattershot, too much in its own manic, mannered head to qualify as a coherent, much less compelling narrative. But in its own bless-this-mess way, “Amsterdam” pays appropriate homage to the eras it invokes, both past and present. It’s so wild, so dreamlike, so utterly preposterous that it could only be a little bit true.

Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale) is a physician in 1933 New York, where his practice is dedicated to easing the suffering of World War I veterans like himself. When his war buddy and best friend Harold (John David Washington) approaches him to perform a mysterious medical procedure on one of their military leaders, the two are plunged into a bizarre and increasingly convoluted scheme, one that will introduce them to a couple of enigmatic birdwatchers (Mike Myers and Michael Shannon), an eccentric millionaire and his saucer-eyed wife (Rami Malek and Anya Taylor-Joy), and Gen. Gil Dillenbeck, a Butler analog played by Robert De Niro with a convincing combination of gravitas and bewilderment.

The shaggy-dog tale Burt and Harold find themselves in will also plunge them back to the Great War, when they met a captivating nurse named Valerie (Margot Robbie) while recuperating in a Belgian hospital. “Amsterdam” takes its title not from the New York of old, but from the European city where Burt, Harold and Valerie found personal liberation in the postwar era of exploration and artistic ferment.

Russell and his crack design team (the production design is by Judy Becker; J.R. Hawbaker and Albert Wolsky designed the costumes) bring impressive energy and detail to building a world immersed in surrealism — the only conceivable aesthetic response to the irrationality and suffering that was supposed to have ceased with the war to end all wars. There are moments, as “Amsterdam” toggles between 1918 and 1933, when it resembles “Ragtime” on psilocybin. Russell, who wrote the script, engages similar issues of race, class, social mobility and power, albeit in an imaginative space where dream logic is at constant odds with the story at hand. Characters appear without explanation; lines of dialogue are repeated for no reason; flights of fancy bump up against moments of graphic gore; coincidences, red herrings, tics and dog legs pile up with promiscuous abandon. “The dream repeats itself before it forgets itself,” one character says, before concluding: “This is the good part.”

There are some good parts in “Amsterdam,” which Russell has populated with some of the screen’s greatest faces — especially the women. In addition to Robbie and Taylor-Joy, he has enlisted Zoe Saldana to play a pathologist who serenely flirts with Burt over an open chest cavity; Andrea Riseborough plays Burt’s wife, Beatrice, a ruthless social climber with the claws to prove it.

It’s all diverting, if not ultimately sustained. Although the cast is thoroughly committed, as “Amsterdam” wends its way to its hysterically pitched climax, it sometimes feels like it’s two very different movies. Bale’s performance is particularly hard to parse: It’s no surprise that he can so completely submerge his British accent to play a streetwise naif, but the accent and characterization become distractions. Is he channeling Peter Falk? Al Pacino? John Turturro? Willem Dafoe?

Such are the distractions of “Amsterdam,” whose curlicues and circumlocutions are genuinely interesting but grow more self-conscious and indulgent with time. The movie’s saving grace is its contagious passion, and Russell’s unavoidably true thesis is that, as historical loops go, the one we’re in right now is a doozy. The demagogues are on the rise again, and it’s hard to know who can fight them off when we’re all the walking wounded.

R. At area theaters. Contains brief violence and bloody images. 127 minutes.

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Busy but interesting period dramedy has gore, swearing.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Clear themes of friendship, love, and trust appare

The main characters sometimes attempt to help othe

The three main characters are a White man, a White

Extremely gory wounds, missing eye. Removing shrap

Kissing. Romantic couple.

Infrequent use of "f--k," "s--t," "son of a bitch,

A doctor experiments on himself with new painkille

Positive Messages

Clear themes of friendship, love, and trust apparent in the three main characters' relationship. Other messages include idea that anything goes in the search for truth, especially when someone has been wrongly accused. Champions democracy over fascism.

Positive Role Models

The main characters sometimes attempt to help others. Characters are generally accepting of others across lines of color, religion, and gender.

Diverse Representations

The three main characters are a White man, a White woman, and a Black man. There's an interracial romance. Racism and antisemitism are depicted as part of the era the movie is set in, but these ideologies are frowned upon. Supporting cast includes several characters of color.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Extremely gory wounds, missing eye. Removing shrapnel from bloody wounds. Woman shoved in front of car, run over, body smashed underneath car. Guns and shooting. Characters shot, bloody wounds. Man punched, knocked out cold (glass eye pops out of his head). Painfully resetting dislocated arm. Autopsy scene, with organs shown. Arguing.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Infrequent use of "f--k," "s--t," "son of a bitch," "bastard," "ass," "hell," "damn," "oh my God."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

A doctor experiments on himself with new painkillers; he sometimes passes out, comically. Later, he's said to have become briefly addicted to these medicines. Injections. Characters take special eyedrops said to numb pain. Social drinking. Pipe smoking. A character with vertigo who's walking unevenly is accused of being drunk.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Amsterdam is a 1930s-set dramedy in which two veterans of World War I ( Christian Bale and John David Washington ) must clear their names of a murder charge with the help of an old friend ( Margot Robbie ) while also protecting their country against evil forces. The complex plot can sometimes be hard to follow, but it's hard to dismiss, and the theme of friendship stands out. Expect moments of extreme gore involving wounded soldiers in the hospital. A woman is also brutally run over by a car, characters are shot (lots of blood), characters are punched, etc. Language includes infrequent uses of "f--k," "s--t," "son of a bitch," and more. Characters kiss, there's social drinking and smoking, and a woman is accused of being drunk (she's just dizzy). A character experiments with painkillers and is said to have become briefly addicted. Injections are shown, and characters take pain-killing eyedrops. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Based on 6 parent reviews

Amazing show

Very good movie........go see it., what's the story.

In AMSTERDAM, it's the 1930s in New York, and Burt Berendsen ( Christian Bale ) is a doctor working to ease wounded war veterans' pain. His best friend, Harold Woodman ( John David Washington ), is a lawyer. Together, they're hired by Liz Meekins ( Taylor Swift ) to perform a secret autopsy on General Bill Meekins, Burt and Harold's former commanding officer, to determine whether he was actually murdered. Shortly after, Liz is shoved in front of a moving car and run over in the street. Burt and Harold are blamed. Flashing back to 1918, during the war, young Burt and Harold are badly injured and sent to the hospital, where they're tended by nurse Valerie ( Margot Robbie ). The three form a strong friendship, and Harold and Valerie fall in love. After the war, they spend a beautiful period living as a trio in Amsterdam. But flashing forward again to the '30s, Burt and Harold must find a way to clear their names, which involves getting another general, Gil Dillenbeck ( Robert De Niro ), to speak at the veterans' reunion, thereby exposing the real killers. The characters' past also finds a way of catching up to them, lending a helping hand.

Is It Any Good?

Wildly ambitious and thoroughly complex, this sprawling David O. Russell period piece has a thick, gummy quality as if it were made in a vacuum, yet it's too relevant to entirely dismiss. The airless quality of Amsterdam -- perhaps a result of the combination of the great Emmanuel Lubezki's lush, glossy cinematography and Russell's weird sense of humor -- gives it an odd dreamy effect. It's sometimes a little too easy for your brain to wander away. Describing the plot is a challenge: Even after going on at some length, you might somehow skip over characters played by such heavyweights as Chris Rock , Anya Taylor-Joy , Rami Malek , Zoe Saldana , Matthias Schoenaerts , Michael Shannon , Mike Myers , and more.

Bale's outsized performance, frequently recalling Al Pacino 's scenery-chewing "Big Boy Caprice" in Dick Tracy , is another factor that keeps the movie from feeling grounded; it's like a crazy cartoon in which earthly logic does not apply. (Robbie joins him in that category during the movie's second half, when her character stumbles and wobbles about thanks to a case of vertigo.) Yet while Amsterdam is exceedingly busy, it's not necessarily messy; Russell attacks it with an admirable confidence. And since its 1930s-era political themes appear to still have modern relevance, perhaps it's a movie that will live on through multiple viewings and further context.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Amsterdam 's violence . How did it make you feel? Was it exciting? Shocking? What did the movie show or not show to achieve this effect? Why is that important?

How are drinking, smoking, and drug use depicted? Are they glamorized? Are there consequences? Why is that important?

Is it hard to believe that some Americans supported fascism during the 1930s? How is that theme relevant today?

What do you think of Valerie's artwork made from shrapnel extracted from wounded soldiers? Is it offensive, like some characters say? Is it good for art to shock or provoke? Why, or why not?

How do the movie's setting and era affect the characters' circumstances and situations? How have things changed since then?

Movie Details

In theaters : October 7, 2022
On DVD or streaming : December 6, 2022
Cast : Christian Bale , Margot Robbie , John David Washington
Director : David O. Russell
Inclusion Information : Female actors, Black actors
Studio : 20th Century Fox
Genre : Comedy
Topics : Friendship
Run time : 134 minutes
MPAA rating : R
MPAA explanation : brief violence and bloody images
Last updated : April 4, 2024

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Amsterdam (United States, 2022)

With its whiplash-inducing tonal inconsistencies and sloppily assembled narrative, Amsterdam often feels like a pastiche of (take your pick) Monty Python, The Coen Brothers, or Wes Anderson grafted onto a crime caper/espionage thriller with a strong allegorical message about fascism. This is more the freewheeling David O. Russell from American Hustle , which also spun its wheels early before settling down, than the disciplined filmmaker who made Silver Linings Playbook and The Fighter . It takes well over an hour before Amsterdam decides what it wants to be and, by that time, viewers may be exasperated by the film’s quirkiness and exhausted by its meandering, unfocused storyline.

Considering that talent involved, anything less than a home run would have to be considered a disappointment. One of the downsides of having so many well-known actors vying for screen time is that none of them gets a chance to shine (not unlike in 2021’s Don’t Look Up ). From a narrative perspective, the story (an opening caption informs us that “A lot of this really happened”), which fictionalizes a Depression-era conspiracy to replace FDR with a respected military man, is not uninteresting but it takes Russell too long to wade through the preliminaries. The movie doesn’t start building momentum until Robert De Niro shows up, and that’s more than an hour into the proceedings.

Russell’s attempts at screwball comedy are inexpert; he’s no Preston Sturges. One of the problems is that the lead trio – physician Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale), attorney Harold Woodman (John David Washington), and shut-in Valerie Voze (Margot Robbie) – are thinly drawn. They never become real and the romantic attachment between Harold and Valerie is stronger in Russell’s imagination than on the screen. By using a non-linear structure to establish the characters and their circumstances, Russell is more apt to confuse viewers than add multi-dimensionality to the characters. The first half is a muddle.

Burt and Harold are approached by Liz Meekins (Taylor Swift), the daughter of their former beloved commanding officer, General Bill Meekins (Ed Begley Jr.), to investigate the circumstances surrounding her father’s passing. Contrary to the official cause of death, Liz believes he was murdered. It doesn’t take much to convince Burt and Harold that she may be right but a series of bad breaks and coincidences have Burt and Harold on the run from the law trying to clear their names. This once again brings them into contact with Valerie along with her brother, Tom (Rami Malek), and Tom’s wife, Libby (Anya Taylor-Joy). Tom wants to help and has powerful connections but is unwilling to stick out his neck…unless Burt and Harold can convince the revered General Gil Dillenbeck (Robert De Niro) to speak out in their defense. Against Tom’s wishes, Valerie accompanies the men when they leave.

Christian Bale’s performance is delightfully loopy. Burt, with his glass eye and penchant for slapstick, is something out of a Mel Brooks movie. Bale is matched beat-for-beat by Margot Robbie, whose bona fides for farce go back to her eye-opening turn in Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street . That leaves John David Washington as the straight man, the Bud Abbott to Bale’s Lou Costello – it’s a role that fits like a glove. The supporting ensemble is crammed with recognizable names. In addition to Rami Malek, Taylor Swift, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Robert De Niro, Russell (despite a checkered reputation) was able to attract Andrea Riseborough (as Burt’s wife), Alessandro Nivola and Matthias Schoenaets (as two detectives), Michael Shannon and Mike Myers (as bird-watching secret agents), Zoe Saldana (as Burt’s love interest – sparks fly during an autopsy), and Chris Rock. Of those, Saldana is underused and there’s a little too much Myers.

There’s no lack of ambition in what Russell attempts with Amsterdam but his goals outstrip his ability to achieve them. A lot of scenes and moments, taken in isolation, are effective, but the juxtaposition of so many conflicting elements creates an unwelcome tension between comedy, drama, and suspense that the filmmakers are unable to manage. The lack of chemistry among the leads doesn’t help the scattershot storytelling. In short, Amsterdam is a mix of good and bad – possibly the least imposing entry on Russell’s strong filmography but by no means unwatchable. It just requires some fortitude to wade through the first hour.

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‘Romeo and Juliet’ Review: Plenty of Style, but Little Love

The London production, starring Tom Holland, sold out in hours. But its understated rendering of the central romance may leave some theatergoers wanting more.

A man in a black hoodie and a woman in a black jacket stand face-to-face, looking into each other’s eyes.

By Houman Barekat

The critic Houman Barekat saw the show in London

As the male lead entered the stage in a new production of “Romeo and Juliet” in London, a single, very loud whoop erupted from the orchestra level. Nobody else joined in — this is Britain, after all — but the breach of decorum was telling. This particular Romeo is the big-screen superstar Tom Holland, of “Spider-Man” fame, and his pulling power helped tickets for this show’s run sell out within hours — even though the actor playing Juliet wasn’t cast until many weeks later.

Yet this “Romeo and Juliet,” directed by Jamie Lloyd (“ Sunset Boulevard ,” “ The Effect ”) and running at the Duke of York’s Theater through Aug. 3, is no straightforward crowd-pleaser. The visuals are stripped-down and the staging unconventional; instead of indulging the giddy melodrama of young love, the emphasis is on brooding atmospherics. The show is slickly executed by a talented cast and production crew, but its understated rendering of the lovers’ romantic infatuation may leave some theatergoers wanting more.

The stage is dark, and entirely bare except for a sign that announces the setting in chunky capitals: VERONA. The performers, in monochrome streetwear, are illuminated by hazy spotlights. (Set design and costumes are by Soutra Gilmour.) In several scenes, they speak from fixed positions, stationed behind microphone stands, sometimes facing the audience rather than each other. The gloomy visuals are complemented by snatches of ambient techno and a dull humming sound that conjures a sense of anticipatory dread. To keep the audience on its toes, some scene changes are punctuated by blinding lights and obnoxiously loud flashbulb clacks. (The sound is by Ben and Max Ringham, the lighting by Jon Clark.)

The minimalist staging puts an extra onus on the actors to make the script shine, and they don’t disappoint. Holland gives a controlled performance as Romeo, evoking the halting, hopeful awkwardness of a love-struck teenager with understatement. As Juliet, Francesca Amewudah-Rivers is similarly restrained: Tentative and inscrutable during the early phase of the courtship, she is at her best in the scenes in which she stands up to her father, Lord Capulet (Tomiwa Edun) as he pressures her to break it off with Romeo. In these moments, Amewudah-Rivers — who is making her West End debut — displays an impregnable abstractedness that rings true to the stubborn determination of adolescence.

The supporting cast is also less experienced than the illustrious leading man, but for the most part, you wouldn’t know it. Edun convinces as the hectoring, overbearing patriarch. Freema Agyeman plays the Nurse, the affable go-between who enables the lovers’ forbidden affair, with a fine blend of sassy assertiveness and quasi-maternal tenderness. Ray Sesay’s Tybalt is impressively menacing and Nima Taleghani, with his wide-eyed and gentle bearing, is tenderly protective as Romeo’s trusty friend, Benvolio.

At times the spectacle feels more like a reading than a play, but some nifty camerawork injects dynamism. A camera operator intermittently appears onstage and films close-up footage of an actor’s face, which is relayed in real time onto a screen above the stage. This technique — familiar from the work of directors such as Ivo van Hove and Christine Jatahy — can sometimes feel frustratingly gratuitous, leading to a sense of visual clutter, but it feels smooth here. During some scenes, actors are filmed elsewhere in the theater — in its foyer bar, corridors and balcony — while others occupy the stage. This gives a fitting sense of simultaneity in a narrative replete with back-channel dialogues and conspiratorial maneuverings.

Lloyd has tried to condense the story to its essence, just as he did in his Olivier-winning take on “Sunset Boulevard.” To this end, one or two scenes — such as the finale in which the Montagues and Capulets agree to set aside their differences after Romeo and Juliet’s deaths — have been abridged. The production’s artful subtlety is encapsulated in the tragic denouement, when the lovers’ deaths are conveyed simply by Holland and Amewudah-Rivers removing their mics.

The restrained portrayal of the lovers’ passion is aesthetically brave, but there’s a downside: In his determination to eschew the easy charms of melodrama, Lloyd slightly undercooks the romance, which in turn diminishes our investment in its terrible ramifications. There are other Shakespeare plays that lend themselves better to this kind of high-concept treatment, because they are more psychologically complex. ( A similarly stylized “Macbeth,” staring David Tennant, which ran at the Donmar Warehouse last year and will transfer to the West End in the fall, comes to mind.)

Leaving the theater, I encountered an excitable throng of mostly young fans hoping to catch a glimpse of Holland. His superstar status will attract a mainstream audience to this show. But what will they make of it? “Spider-Man” it most certainly ain’t.

Romeo and Juliet Through Aug. 3 at the Duke of York’s Theater in London; thedukeofyorks.com .

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‘romeo & juliet’ theater review: tom holland disappoints in return to the stage, but another star is born.

Francesca Amewudah-Rivers is magnificent in Jamie Lloyd’s overly subdued, minimalist take on Shakespeare’s doomed romance, playing in London’s West End.

By Demetrios Matheou

Demetrios Matheou

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Romeo and Juliet. Tom Holland (Romeo) and Francesca Amewudah-Rivers (Juliet)

There’s been a lot of heat around London’s new Romeo & Juliet , understandably so given its pairing of director Jamie Lloyd ( Betrayal , A Doll’s House ), known for his radical remodeling of classics, usually around A-list actors, with young global superstar Tom Holland . The latter is returning to the stage for the first time since Billy Elliot: The Musical at the very start of his career, his name causing tickets to sell out in just two hours.

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IMAGES

Movie Review: AMSTERDAM
Amsterdam (2022)
Movie review: ‘Amsterdam:’ a star-filled comedy that loses its way
Amsterdam movie review & film summary (2022)
The Best Movies About Amsterdam
Amsterdam Movie (2022)

COMMENTS

Amsterdam movie review & film summary (2022)
Amsterdam. Simultaneously overstuffed and undernourished, frantic and meandering, "Amsterdam" is one big, star-studded, hot mess of a movie. Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Robert De Niro, Anya Taylor-Joy, Rami Malek, Chris Rock, Michael Shannon, Zoe Saldana, Alessandro Nivola and many more major names: How can you ...
Amsterdam (2022)
Amsterdam. Rent Amsterdam on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, or buy it on Fandango at Home, Prime Video. Amsterdam has a bunch of big stars and a very busy plot, all of which amounts to painfully ...
'Amsterdam' Review: A Madcap Mystery With Many Whirring Parts
In "Amsterdam," Christian Bale, Margot Robbie and John David Washington play three American comrades who met in Europe during World War I. Merie Weismiller/20th Century Studios. By Manohla ...
Amsterdam
Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 7, 2023. While Amsterdam was undoubtedly enjoyable to film for its many costars, the merriment doesn't quite translate to the screen. The plethora of side ...
'Amsterdam' Review: David O. Russell's All-Star Mess Is a Must-See
That decade's shadow looms large over Amsterdam, Russell's first movie in seven years. Never mind that the bulk of the action takes place between the two world wars. You can detect a strong ...
'Amsterdam' Review: Christian Bale and Margot Robbie Head Starry
September 27, 2022 7:00pm. From left: John David Washington, Margot Robbie and Christian Bale in 'Amsterdam' Courtesy of Merie Weismiller Wallace/20th Century Studios. David O. Russell 's ...
Amsterdam (2022)
Amsterdam: Directed by David O. Russell. With Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Alessandro Nivola. In the 1930s, three friends witness a murder, are framed for it, and uncover one of the most outrageous plots in American history.
"Amsterdam" Is an Exemplary Work of Resistance Cinema
Burt, an Army medic, was appointed by the fair-minded, honorable General Bill Meekins (Ed Begley, Jr.) to take over from a cruel racist as the commander of the all-Black 369th Regiment, then ...
Review: David O. Russell's 'Amsterdam' Is An All-Star Delight
Music by Daniel Pemberton. Opening theatrically courtesy of Walt Disney DIS +2.2% on October 7. David O. Russell's Amsterdam is a surprise delight, both in terms of a filmmaker whose star ...
Amsterdam (2022)
60. The Hollywood Reporter David Rooney. David O. Russell's Amsterdam is a lot of movies inelegantly squidged into one — a zany screwball comedy, a crime thriller, an earnest salute to pacts of love and friendship, an antifascist history lesson with fictional flourishes. Those competing strands all have their merits, bolstered by ...
Amsterdam Review
A mystery that fizzles. Amsterdam premieres exclusively in theaters Oct. 7. There's a very good movie simmering inside Amsterdam that might have flourished if writer/director David O. Russell ...
Amsterdam
Chicago Sun-Times. Oct 5, 2022. In the case of David O. Russell's jaw-droppingly terrible, aggressively tasteless, profoundly unfunny and interminably dull conspiracy thriller and would-be comedy "Amsterdam," the all-star ensemble has less chemistry than a high school freshman on the first day of class. Read More.
Amsterdam Review
Amsterdam Review. In 1933 New York, long-time regiment buddies Burt (Christian Bale) and Harold (John David Washington) are drawn into investigating the murder of their former commanding officer ...
'Amsterdam' review: Christian Bale, John David Washington and ...
"Amsterdam" certainly doesn't suffer from a lack of ambition, and the star-studded cast merely adds to that sense of grandeur. Yet writer-director David O. Russell has assembled them in the ...
Amsterdam (2022)
efee_puiyi 9 July 2023. The film "Amsterdam" is nicely written and directed by David O. Russell. It's the story about friendship, the relationship between an idealistic doctor, an idealistic black lawyer and a nice looking idealistic artist. Bale, Washington and Robbie is an awesome trio. Bales acting is remarkable.
'Amsterdam' Review: David O. Russell's Ungainly Period Dramedy
'Amsterdam' Review: Three Amigos Try to Save America in David O. Russell's Ungainly Period Dramedy Reviewed at AMC Century City, Los Angeles, Sept. 19, 2022. MPA Rating: R. Running time: 134 ...
Amsterdam review: David O. Russell's starry comedy is odd and fitful
Amsterdam. review: David O. Russell's muddled comedy is all stars and shenanigans. Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, and dozens more populate an odd shaggy-dog mystery. By. Leah Greenblatt. Published ...
'Amsterdam' Movie Review: Intoxicating, Exhausting
David O. Russell's mystery-comedy has a great star-studded cast including Christian Bale, John David Washington, Margot Robbie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Rock, Robert De Niro, and Rami Malek. It ...
'Amsterdam' Movie Review
Amsterdam. Goes For Wokeness Over Substance. David O. Russell's latest film is giving me flashbacks of that video of A-list celebrities singing "Imagine" to us over Zoom. America may have run ...
Review
Review by Ann Hornaday. October 4, 2022 at 2:26 p.m. EDT. ( 2 stars) "A lot of this actually happened" is the opening epigram of "Amsterdam," David O. Russell's kaleidoscopic riff on the ...
Amsterdam Movie Review
In AMSTERDAM, it's the 1930s in New York, and Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale) is a doctor working to ease wounded war veterans' pain.His best friend, Harold Woodman (John David Washington), is a lawyer.Together, they're hired by Liz Meekins (Taylor Swift) to perform a secret autopsy on General Bill Meekins, Burt and Harold's former commanding officer, to determine whether he was actually murdered.
Amsterdam (2022 film)
Amsterdam is a 2022 period mystery comedy thriller film directed, written, and produced by David O. Russell and starring Christian Bale (who also produced), Margot Robbie, and John David Washington alongside an ensemble supporting cast including Chris Rock, Anya Taylor-Joy, Zoe Saldaña, Mike Myers, Michael Shannon, Timothy Olyphant, Andrea Riseborough, Taylor Swift, Matthias Schoenaerts ...
Amsterdam
A movie review by James Berardinelli. With its whiplash-inducing tonal inconsistencies and sloppily assembled narrative, Amsterdam often feels like a pastiche of (take your pick) Monty Python, The Coen Brothers, or Wes Anderson grafted onto a crime caper/espionage thriller with a strong allegorical message about fascism.
'Romeo and Juliet' Review: Plenty of Style, but Little Love
The London production, starring Tom Holland, sold out in hours. But its understated rendering of the central romance may leave some theatergoers wanting more.
'Romeo & Juliet' Theater Review: Tom Holland Returns to the Stage
The biggest victim of the approach is the star turn. For the most part, Holland's Romeo is a subdued, teary, vulnerable, underwhelming fellow; it's hard to see why Juliet would go to such ...

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Amsterdam Goes For Wokeness Over Substance

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‘Amsterdam’: True-ish shaggy-dog tale from 1933 (with echoes of 2022)

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