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“Amsterdam” Is an Exemplary Work of Resistance Cinema

By Richard Brody

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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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.

Now playing in theaters. 

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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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’: Review

By Tim Grierson, Senior US Critic 2022-09-28T02:00:00+01:00

Christian Bale and Margot Robbie head an A-list cast in David O. Russell’s overstuffed period murder mystery

Source: Walt Disney Studios

‘Amsterdam’

Dir/scr: David O. Russell. US. 2022. 134mins

David O. Russell’s films burst at the seams, his characters barely able to contain their big dreams and even bigger personalities. But such unbridled energy requires a careful execution, lest the proceedings become exhausting rather than exuberant; a distinction Amsterdam fails to recognise. Although stuffed with ambition and the occasionally arresting moment, this 1930s mystery flaunts a freewheeling spirit that far outpaces its convoluted story and dramatically thin protagonists. The picture couldn’t look better thanks to its ace period detail and Emmanuel Lubezki’s enrapturing photography, but the writer-director’s usual emotional maximalism is both cranked up too high and not nearly affecting enough. 

What once felt effortless in Russell’s orchestrated mayhem here seems strained

Opening on October 7 in multiple territories including the UK and US (following IMAX preview screenings in the US on September 27), Russell’s first feature since 2015’s Joy boasts an array of award-winning stars including Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Rami Malek and Robert De Niro. In its flamboyance and sprawling scope, Amsterdam resembles multiple-Oscar-nominee American Hustle , a sizeable hit ($251 million worldwide) which, similarly, was loosely based on actual events. The possibility of Russell’s latest duplicating that success seems unlikely, however, with reviews likely less than glowing.

In 1933 New York, doctor Burt (Bale) and lawyer Harold (Washington) are longtime best friends who met in France while fighting in the same regiment during World War I. But when their aged commanding officer Bill Meekins (Ed Begley Jr.) is found dead — and the autopsy suggests he was murdered — Burt and Harold determine to get to the bottom of it. Their investigation will lead to them reuniting with Valerie (Robbie), a nurse who patched them up in the Great War, fell in love with Harold and then disappeared.

Touching on everything from fascism to racism, Amsterdam looks to the past to tell a story about present-day woes, plunging our three heroes into a tale full of intrigue, romance and dark comedy. (Because of Burt’s severe battlefield injuries he now requires a glass eye, which tends to fall out at the most inopportune times.) But Russell drapes his film’s sober concerns in stylish looks, accentuated by J.R. Hawbaker and Albert Wolsky’s glamorous costumes and Judy Becker’s rich production design. This is just one way that Amsterdam is drunk on its own showmanship, confidently shifting between time periods, sporting voiceover from two different characters, and every once in a while slowing down the feverish forward momentum to focus on Harold and Valerie’s blossoming attraction. (Lubezki’s floating camera is especially useful for the love story, lending a little fairytale magic.)

Unfortunately, Amsterdam ’s boisterous panache can only take Russell and his spirited actors so far. The bond between Burt and Harold always feels superficial, and despite Robbie’s ultra-chic portrayal of this kindly nurse who’s also an artist suffering from a touch of vertigo, she can’t overcome a character loaded down with quirks. In fact, many in the massive ensemble seem to have been encouraged to give slightly exaggerated, self-consciously “old-timey” performances. Malek and Anya Taylor-Joy play an eccentric married couple with an unexpected connection to Valerie, while Andrea Riseborough is frustratingly broad as Burt’s snooty, upperclass wife. With the exception of a nicely restrained De Niro, portraying a somber general who emerges as the film’s moral compass, the supporting cast is “colourful” without being particularly memorable.

That said, Amsterdam can sometimes be breezy fun, the story’s unpredictability and the main characters’ openhearted desire to find their place in the world — a familiar trait in Russell protagonists — intermittently compelling. And although Bale often goes to extremes when working with the director, donning outrageous wigs while depicting foolhardy souls, he locates in Burt a man who was physically (and psychically) shattered by the war, yet refuses to let go of his optimism about people. There’s a winning sweetness and vulnerability to the role that Amsterdam ’s overly busy and increasingly complicated plotting can’t quite accommodate for. Instead, Burt and his friends will go down a conspiracy-laden rabbit hole while investigating Meekins’ killing that results in a heavy-handed — albeit, apparently fact-based — revelation that’s not especially satisfying.

As in American Hustle , the writer-director wants to marry a rollicking narrative to a thoughtful commentary about America, painting an unflattering portrait of a nation that too easily forgets those who fought in its wars while buying into a myth of its unrivalled greatness. Many of the people Burt, Harold and Valerie encounter are cynical or corrupt but, in typical Russell fashion, his main characters have retained their idealistic streak. Amsterdam ’s joyous, indulgent cheekiness is meant to celebrate that playful defiance, turning a potentially tense whodunit into a giddy, sweeping romp. But what once felt effortless in Russell’s orchestrated mayhem here seems strained, a lark that refuses to take flight.

Production companies: New Regency, DreamCrew Entertainment, Keep Your Head, Corazon Camera   

Worldwide distribution: Disney

Producers: Arnon Milchan, Matthew Budman, Anthony Katagas, David O. Russell, Christian Bale          

Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki

Production design: Judy Becker

Editing: Jay Cassidy

Music: Daniel Pemberton

Main cast: 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 Saldana, Rami Malek, Robert De Niro

• United States
• Walt Disney

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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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The 250 greatest guitarists of all time, the 500 greatest albums of all time, the 50 worst decisions in movie history, every awful thing trump has promised to do in a second term.

Yet this slippery work has more on its addled mind than the distant past, as it ricochets like a pinball between genres and runs its more-than-game players through their manic paces. Russell has taken an epic canvas of a narrative, set in two eras and three countries, with a dozen or so speaking parts, only to drop in a rather intimate, sincere tale of love and friendship amidst the razzle dazzle. It’s Ragtime with a gooey Jules and Jim at the center. It’s also a mystery, a comedy set to a speed somewhere between “daffy” and “screwball,” a war-is-hell drama, a sentimental la vie boheme throwback, a cautionary tale about our present and one beautiful mess of a picture. You can add a “must-see” for good measure as well. There’s nothing quite like it out right now.

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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.

Enter the nurse. This is Valerie Voze (Robbie), part-time caretaker for the maimed and mutilated and full-time eccentric. Her hobbies include smoking pipes, drinking illicit hooch and making art from the shrapnel she removes from soldiers’ bodies — a repurposing of mass-destruction debris into Dadaist art. She’s not really French, either, but an American ex-pat tooling around Europe in search of adventure. Valerie and Woodman have eyes for each other, but it’s quickly established that this will be a trio: “Never again shall I pour two without a third,” our lady of the perpetual avant-garde zaniness declares. The three head to Amsterdam, where they live and laugh and love among fellow artists, misfits, outcasts. For a while, this three-person Lost Generation make a lovely garden of Eden for themselves. Then Burt decides to return home to the States and the spell is broken. By the time they’re all reunited back in New York years later, corpses and conspiracies have made the stakes of their bonding a lot higher.

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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 review: A great film is fighting to get out

David o russell’s first film since ‘joy’ is stylish and full of charming performances, but feels longer than a three-day mini-break, article bookmarked.

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Dir: David O Russell. Starring: Christian Bale, John David Washington, Margot Robbie, Robert de Niro, Rami Malek. Cert 15, 134 minutes

“A lot of this really happened” goes the title card for David O Russell ’s starry, stylish, caper-ish Amsterdam . Emphasis on “a lot”. In its relentless, pinballing plot, there’s a fascist coup, an unsolved murder, an entire world war, shady figures aplenty, many cunning plans, and… a love story. It runs to just over two hours, but I felt like I’d been watching it for three days. Which, coincidentally, is the same duration as my most recent – and far less eventful – trip to actual Amsterdam.

This is Russell’s first film since the intriguing mob boss biopic Joy in 2015. In those seven years, he seems to have had a lot of ideas and put them all of them into one film. Largely set in New York in the 1930s, his script hinges on a curious true story, in which a cabal of businessmen attempted to overthrow Franklin D Roosevelt and replace him with a popular war veteran who they could puppeteer for their own malevolent ends. This, though, ends up feeling like the Any Other Business section of a film you could describe as a comedy. Or a thriller. Or a mystery. Or a historical drama. It is, as I say, A Lot.

In fact, it functions best as a buddy movie. Christian Bale , John David Washington and Margot Robbie form our plucky trio. Bale is the zany doctor Burt Berendsen who “left my eye in France”. He likes coming up with experimental medicines and his hair gets more unkempt as the film gets wilder. Washington, largely the straight man, is the smart, sensitive lawyer Harold Woodman, who faces a lot of racism with quiet dignity. And Robbie, as nurse Valerie, smokes a pipe to let us know she’s ballsy. They meet and form a friendship pact during the First World War, in which Burt and Harold are blown up and stitched back together by Valerie, who makes arty sculptures from the shrapnel she removes from their bodies. When the conflict ends, they go to Amsterdam, where they emerge as a kind of Bloomsbury Group but with better-moisturised skin. We see them tangled up together on the floor, having heady nights out dancing, making art, supporting battle-torn veterans and wearing silly hats. The contrast is bluntly drawn: Amsterdam is a haven of free love, while America is a nest of prejudice and corruption. Unfortunate, then, they should end up dispersed and back in nasty old America, where Burt and Harold are falsely accused of murder.

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The music is scampery. The vibe: hijinks. Sometimes it’s as though Wes Anderson were running a speakeasy, with the cast to match. Top-tier actors come and go at such a rate that it starts to feel a bit obnoxious. Look, it’s Chris Rock! Michael Shannon! Zoe Saldana! Anya Taylor-Joy! Mike Myers! Alessandro Nivola! Rami Malek! Robert de Niro! Taylor Swift is in a car crash within the first 10 minutes, which is to say she comes out of it a lot better than she did in Cats . After a while, these beautifully lit appearances make the film feel stilted, like when you’re playing a computer game and a new character pops up with some expositional dialogue to send you on a mission.

Rami Malek, Anya Taylor-Joy and Margot Robbie in ‘Amsterdam’

But the central performances are charming, and stretches of the film are enjoyable. Everything looks stylish and wonderful, and everyone has nice hair. Seriously, Rami Malek, what conditioner are you using? The thing is, there is a great film in here fighting to get out, but it’s drowned out by manic plotting, self-indulgence, and a thickly laid-on, twee message about love and art. Things start to unravel about halfway through as the plot gets denser and the point becomes foggier. Even the characters start to tell each other that they don’t know what’s going on. Who killed Taylor Swift’s dad? Who is running a set of inhumane sterilisation clinics? Who are the “Committee of Five”? Is someone drugging Valerie? Will Christian Bale’s wife ever let him move back in? In a handful of scenes, you can feel the creaky levering of the plot. It’s bizarre that so unwieldy a film should also feel so tightly manipulated.

One of Amsterdam ’s most intriguing elements is its sheer number of slightly broken men; so many of them are scarred and stitched together, bearing the wounds of the war on their bodies or behind their eyes. The film hints at some sophisticated ideas about the weaponisation of veterans and the complicated thread between masculinity, service and patriotism. There’s an unspoken understanding between those who fought, and shame directed at those who didn’t (Nivola’s detective character is teased about the “flat feet” that excused him). But the film skims past them in its pursuit of so many other things. It wants to address racism, intolerance, conspiracy theories, class, and plenty more besides. Eventually, it rolls over to give us its saccharine message about “art and love – that’s what makes the life worth living”. It’s hard not to raise an eyebrow, given Russell is allegedly a director who doesn’t treat people with a whole lot of love when he makes art. The main problem, though, is that this is a richly overstuffed concoction, and not many of us are inspired to creativity or kindness when we’re full. We tend to just need a lie-down.

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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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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

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 had the discipline to keep a tight rein on the overly ambitious scale of his script. A period piece/dramedy/mystery/thriller/romance/satire, Amsterdam reminded me of listening to a 6-year-old trying to tell you a story that just rambles off into a ditch because of their unfettered hyper indulgence with convoluted asides. What starts out as a relatively compact and clever tale of two WWI veterans who get framed for murder devolves into a hodgepodge of connected tangents that includes everything from a triangular soulmate relationship to the surreptitious rise of facism in the United States between WWI and WWII.

Burt (Christian Bale) narrates the overall story, and the context of his life as a WWI veteran who lost his eye in battle. Nowadays, he either works tirelessly or sees his best friend Harold Woodman (John David Washington), a lawyer in an all-Black firm. Russell takes us on a lengthy flashback to show us how the two met in France, 1918, when they were assigned to the same platoon. Riddled with shrapnel and major wounds, they’re patched up by Valerie Brandenburg (Margot Robbie), an American expat volunteer nurse in France, and the trio become inseparable, relocating to Amsterdam. Their idyllic existence ends, however, when Burt goes back home to his apathetic wife, Beatrice, (Andrea Riseborough). Valerie and Harold realize their romantic relationship can’t survive in America, Val vanishes, and Harold follows Burt to New York to get his law degree.

In 1933, Harold and Burt are summoned in secret by Liz Meekins (Taylor Swift), the daughter of their former non-racist commander, General Bill Meekins (Ed Begley Jr.), to perform an autopsy on his recently deceased body, as she fears foul play. Burt performs the procedure with the help of mortician’s assistant Irma St. Clair (Zoe Saldana) and just as they go to reveal the results, Liz is brutally run over by a car driven by a scarred man (Timothy Olyphant), who then convinces the crowd that Harold and Burt pushed her. They go on the run and all hell breaks loose.

That’s a lot to process but there’s at least five other subplots not even mentioned. If Russell kept the story entirely focused on the trio of Valerie, Burt, and Howard, the movie would have been much lighter on its feet because of the rapport and comedic performances of Robbie, Bale, and Washington. They’re great together, and their halcyon remembrances of Amsterdam as their happiest and purest days of love and friendship are the most affecting of the film. They sizzle whenever they share the screen, as Bale’s manic energy, Washington’s dry wit, and Robbie’s wide-eyed idealism work in perfect synergy.

Who's your favorite actor in Amsterdam's star-studded cast?

And while they’re supported by some interesting performances by the likes of Saldana, Mike Myers, Michael Shannon, and Chris Rock, most of the cast are operating within an impenetrable sliding scale of their personalities being “way too big” or “way too quirky.” There’s scenery chewing galore, especially as the machinations of the overarching plot reach their climax and there’s no shortage of scenes featuring arch fascists, corporatists, or moralists banging literal and figurative podiums. By the last 30 minutes, what should have been a lark-filled mystery unveiling instead becomes a pretty insufferable, verbose, on-the-nose conclusion that draws parallels to what happened then with today’s political discourse. How the movie went from a charming war friends pastiche to an ending that has Robert De Niro’s General character reading a speech next to actual footage of his real-life counterpart in history doing the same is exactly what’s wrong with Amsterdam. Russell just veers indiscriminately towards whatever he’s trying to say and hammers it home without any of the grace present in the first reel.

Strongest performances aside, Amsterdam is also an unequivocally beautiful film to look at. It’s like a Coen brothers feature procreated with a Wes Anderson movie and out popped Amsterdam’s aesthetics. Cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, production designer Judy Becker, and the costume and hair and makeup teams have recreated the time and places with incredible texture and gorgeous color palettes. Robbie and Anya Taylor-Joy are luminous. The men look dapper even if most are sporting some kind of post-war prosthetic scar or deformity. But in the end, none of the wrapping can save the film from the self-important nosedive it takes, which sadly sucks the life out of all of the early material that had such promise.

Amsterdam starts out strong but gets weighed down by David O. Russell’s heavy-handed script that devolves from an involving mystery into a preachy and overblown allegory about facism. Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, and John David Washington have fantastic chemistry but they get buried under the weight of a script that suffocates the humanity of their story and veers off into a ridiculously complicated plot that feels like it goes on forever and never regains its heart.

In This Article

More Reviews by Tara Bennett

Ign recommends.

Amsterdam Review: An Overcooked, But Entertaining Mystery

Starring christian bale, john david washington and margot robbie..

It will take individual members of the moviegoing audience only a few minutes to decide whether or not David O. Russell’s Amsterdam is a film that is “for them.” A manic tone is established from the outset as we are introduced to Christian Bale ’s Burt Berendsen, a Hunter S. Thompson-esque doctor and World War I veteran with a glass eye who operates a shady medical practice helping out fellow veterans in 1933 New York City. Voiceover from Burt quickly ushers us through his life and work before catapulting the character to a meeting with his best friend, John David Washington ’s Harold Woodman, a fellow veteran and attorney who proceeds to roll out a dead man in a box (Ed Begley Jr.) and introduce the corpse’s grieving daughter ( Taylor Swift ), who is certain that her father was murdered.

Quippy zaniness is the keystone of the madcap adventure, and that voice is relentless even as the film veers towards some of the most consequential subject matter in modern history. If it’s not your thing, you’ll check out immediately, but those who get onboard will find an entertaining, albeit overcooked mystery that is enhanced with what feels in the moment like a seemingly endless ensemble of talented actors who enter the picture with each new plot development.

The aforementioned dead man in a box is identified as General Bill Meekins, who not only has a close history with Burt and Harold (technically he was the one who introduced them), but was supposed to be the main speaker at a benefit that the two men are coordinating. They believe Meekins’ daughter’s claims, which then almost immediately results in more murder… and then, indicative of the movie’s weirdness, everything goes into flashback mode. We first see how Burt first met Harold during World War I in France 1918, but then we learn how the duo met Valerie Voze ( Margot Robbie ), an eccentric nurse who patches them up and saves their lives after they are nearly killed on the battlefield.

Amsterdam's manic style is matched well with an engaging mystery.

Amsterdam sports a lot of “stranger than fiction” energy (it opens with a non-committal based-on-a-true story title card reading “A lot of this really happened”), and it more than occasionally feels like it’s trying to do too much – such as with Valerie’s avant-garde artistic sensibilities making sculpture from shrapnel, and the trio coming up with a “nonsense song” comprised of random French phrases. It takes quirkiness into the red, but the film works because it’s all tied to an engaging and propulsive mystery.

Once the movie bounces back from the flashback – with Burt, Harold and Valerie’s lives becoming intertwined while they live together in the titular city after World War I – Amsterdam establishes proper stakes and keeps the narrative moving with Burt and Harold finding clues that get them closer to discovering the truth of what happened to General Meekins. It never gets particularly complex, but it also never gets stupid, and each progression in the plot keeps you wondering about what’s coming next.

Part of the fun of Amsterdam is wondering what famous face will show up next.

Said curiosity is both driven by the desire to know the answers to the movie’s biggest questions, as well as David O. Russell’s special brand of stunt casting. If I could make one particular recommendation going into Amsterdam , it would be that you should avoid looking at the film’s full cast list (and I’m actually going to stop naming names in this review beyond those I have already mentioned). Practically every line is delivered by actors who are headlining movies released throughout the year – and none of them are shortchanged. Each has a memorable part to play and a standout personality to go with it.

Of course, anchoring the whole thing is the trio headlining the adventure. Given that Christian Bale, John David Washington and Margot Robbie have proven themselves as three of the most consummate performers working today, their success should inspire little surprise, but that makes it no less wonderful. Chemistry in the triumvirate is essential to the story that David O. Russell is telling, and theirs is effortless and palpable. Between the three, Bale is given the most to work with and delivers one of his best comedic performances – rounding out his David O. Russell trilogy after making The Fighter and American Hustle – but they are all given memorable lines and moments from the writer/director’s script.

Their individual characters’ eccentricities and choices in their performances mesh impressively well together, and the movie clicks into high gear when they are all together – first in the World War I flashback, and then in 1933 when Burt and Harold are inadvertently reunited with Valerie while trying to solve the murder mystery.

Amsterdam walks a narrow tightrope line of being too much, and there are moments where knees bend and arms flail for balance, but it does stay upright and put on a show in the process. It has a distinct voice, an entertaining story to tell and a well-used phenomenal cast, which amounts to a fun cinematic experience.

Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.

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‘amsterdam’ review: christian bale and margot robbie head starry ensemble in david o. russell’s chaotic cautionary tale.

The 1930s-set comedy thriller’s stacked cast also includes John David Washington, Robert De Niro, Rami Malek, Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Rock, Zoe Saldaña and Taylor Swift.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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Every new movie from Russell now stirs up allegations of his abusive behavior on- and off-set for relitigation on Film Twitter. But that hasn’t hurt his ability to draw top talent. The phalanx of stars will be the main attraction with this long-gestating Fox project, going out through Disney, even if the cautionary note about history repeating itself doesn’t lack for contemporary relevance.

While Russell’s screenplay introduces them in a choppy flashback structure that starts in New York in 1933 before rewinding 15 years, a trio of fast friends forms the story’s core. They are Burt Berendsen ( Christian Bale ), a doctor experimenting outside the medical establishment with new pain treatments, particularly for wounded war veterans; his attorney chum Harold Woodman ( John David Washington ); and wealthy artist Valerie Voze ( Margot Robbie ).

They met in France in 1918, while serving in World War I. Burt was urged to enlist by the blue-blood family of his since-estranged wife Beatrice (Andrea Riseborough). Her snobbish parents (Casey Biggs, Dey Young) felt that becoming a war hero might paper over his half Jewish, half Catholic working-class background and make him a better fit for the family’s Park Avenue medical practice.

Their friendship was at its sweetest in Amsterdam, where Valerie introduced them to Paul Canterbury (Mike Myers) and Henry Norcross (Michael Shannon), intelligence officers for the British and American governments, respectively, as well as ornithological enthusiasts thrown out of the international bird-watchers society for stealing eggs from the nests of near-extinct species. Canterbury also manufactures glass eyes, allowing him to provide a replacement for the eye Burt lost in combat.

All this might seem a fussy overload of background detail, and indeed, the movie often feels like it’s piling on eccentricities in a bid to out-quirk Wes Anderson. The bond uniting Burt and Harold and Valerie is platonic, though tinged by hesitant romance between the latter two. But Russell’s screenplay is too manic to establish the three-way union forged during the Amsterdam idyll as the film’s true heart, despite its title.

The story becomes even busier with the 1933 plot, which bolts out of the gate when well-heeled mystery woman Liz Meekins ( Taylor Swift ) contacts Burt and Harold to ask for their help. She’s suspicious about the death of her father, the beloved former Army general Bill Meekins (Ed Begley Jr.), who oversaw the 369th and who died under murky circumstances during a recent return passage by ship from Europe. The general was scheduled to be guest speaker at an upcoming New York veterans’ reunion gala.

In case the character gallery isn’t already crowded enough for you, there’s also Valerie’s philanthropist brother Tom ( Rami Malek ) and his wife Libby ( Anya Taylor-Joy ). It won’t even have registered to most viewers that Valerie drifted out of Harold and Burt’s orbit after the war until they turn up at the Voze mansion while investigating Meekins’ death and find her heavily medicated for a supposed nervous disorder.

A related crime that occurs early on puts Burt and Harold on the radar of fellow WWI vet Detective Lem Getweiler (Matthias Schoenaerts) and his dimwit flat-footed partner Det. Hiltz (Alessandro Nivola).

I confess I found all this messy and exhausting until Burt and Harold’s investigation leads them to Meekins’ army buddy General Gil Dillenbeck (De Niro), living a quiet life in the leafy suburbs with his droll, doting wife (Beth Grant). Inspired by Armed Forces legend Major General Smedley Butler, who at the time of his death in 1940 was the most decorated U.S. Marine in history, Dillenbeck provides a welcome anchor to the story, while De Niro’s stern authority in the role helps whip the wandering tone into line.

That American conspiracy plot is rooted in history, tied to the rise of Fascism in Italy and Germany; it’s a fascinating story, withstanding Russell’s efforts to kill it with over-embellishment. The writer-director claims the film’s genesis dates back before the recent resurgence of the White Supremacist movement, the swirl of QAnon lunacy and far-right attempts to undermine the democratic integrity of the American government. But the parallels with our current reality are unmistakable, while the acknowledgment of shameful footnotes such as forced sterilization clinics touches on the evil of racial “cleansing.”

Although Amsterdam maintains a stubbornly hopeful belief that goodness will prevail, the film is also realistic about the resilience of hate in our political culture and the fact that the deep-pocketed instigators of jackboot menace are seldom punished. It makes for a stirring final act, even if the sobering message doesn’t always sync up with Russell’s chaotically cartoonish approach — a mercurial divide mirrored in Daniel Pemberton’s score, which veers between high intrigue and whimsy.

But this is primarily a character-driven movie, even if that field has so many people jostling for space that the material might have been better suited to limited-series treatment. Some of the performances don’t have much scope to stretch beyond caricature, but among the secondary characters that make an impression are Malek’s Tom Voze, an oily balance of charm and creepiness; Taylor-Joy’s similarly two-faced Libby, a climber who gets amusingly giddy around De Niro’s general; Saldaña, wise and grounded as Irma, casually discussing the finer points of love over a corpse; and Riseborough, a coddled Daddy’s girl still struggling to reconcile her affections with familial expectations.

As for the central trio, Washington exudes an easy charisma that hasn’t always been apparent in his previous roles, while Robbie melds old-fashioned movie-star glamor with modern intelligence, her bohemian spirit making her credible as a rebellious heiress, an idiosyncratic artist and a woman whose heart operates by its own rules. Valerie believes in love and art and kindness, making her the movie’s unofficial mascot.

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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.

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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 review: An exhausting, overlong conspiracy thriller

Amsterdam could have been forgiven for being a lot of things, but dull is not one of them. The new film from writer-director David O. Russell boasts one of the most impressive ensemble casts of the year and is photographed by Emmanuel Lubezki, one of Hollywood’s premier cinematographers. Beyond that, its kooky premise and even wackier cast of characters open the door for Amsterdam to be the kind of screwball murder mystery that O. Russell, at the very least, seems uniquely well-equipped to make.

Instead, Amsterdam is a disaster of the highest order. It’s a film made up of so many disparate, incongruent parts that it becomes clear very early on in its 134-minute runtime that no one involved — O. Russell most of all — really knew what it is they were making. It is a misfire of epic proportions, a comedic conspiracy thriller that is written like a haphazard screwball comedy but paced like a meandering detective drama. Every element seems to be at odds with another, resulting in a film that is rarely funny but consistently irritating.

As its exposition-laden opening narration establishes, Amsterdam follows Dr. Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale), a doctor and war veteran who has grown used to living every day with a glass eye and back brace. Forever changed by his experience fighting in World War I, Burt has taken it upon himself to try to single-handedly care for all of the other wounded vets who have been left behind by the elites of early 1930s New York City. Unfortunately for him, it’s this philanthropic instinct that leads Burt into agreeing to conduct a covert autopsy on the body of his former commanding officer.

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When Burt discovers that the man in question was, indeed, poisoned, he is forced to team back up with two of his WWI companions, a lawyer named Harold Woodsman (John David Washington) and Valerie Voze (Margot Robbie), the former combat nurse who saved Burt and Harold’s lives when they were injured in the war. Before long, Burt, Harold, and Valerie all find themselves caught up in a conspiracy involving several powerful businessmen, a celebrated American general (played by Robert De Niro), and the authoritarian political wave that’s simultaneously sweeping through Europe.

If that all sounds a bit messy and convoluted, that’s because it is. However, while Amsterdam ’s premise is loosely based on an obscure American political conspiracy known as the Business Plot , the film fails to coherently adapt its real-life story for the big screen. O. Russell’s attempts to stress the contemporary relevance of the Business Plot itself never come across as anything more than ham-fisted and hackneyed, either, and that’s especially true by the time that Amsterdam tosses out a lazy and obvious visual joke in its third act about the secretly fascistic design of one character’s hedges.

Amsterdam also saddles most of its cast members with some of the most inauthentic and cloying dialogue you’ll likely hear this year. Zoe Saldaña, for instance, is utterly wasted in a thankless role that would rather her espouse empty platitudes about the nature of love than contribute anything of real substance to Amsterdam ’s story. O. Russell’s script, meanwhile, buries Robbie, Washington, and Bale’s natural charisma beneath superfluous layers of eccentricities that add little to their characters, and the love story that binds Harold, Burt, and Valerie together is so thinly sketched and saccharine that it ultimately rings false.

There are a few performers who do manage to make the most out of O. Russell’s screwball swings — namely, Michael Shannon, Mike Myers, Alessandro Nivola, and Andrea Riseborough. Anya Taylor-Joy also makes an admirable attempt at bringing her obnoxiously narcissistic character to life in as satirical a way as possible, but the heightened aspects of her performance are drowned out by both O. Russell’s frequently odd editing choices and the sleepy performance that Rami Malek gives as her on-screen partner, Tom.

For his part, Lubezki’s cinematography imbues Amsterdam with a kind of warmth and sensitivity that its dramatically inert script lacks. Lubezki’s meditative, Malick-esque visual style does often seem to be at odds with O. Russell’s frenetic sense of humor, though, which only makes the disconnect between the way Amsterdam is written and the way it was brought to life that much more apparent. While J.R. Hawbaker and Albert Wolsky’s costumes only further reinforce Amsterdam ’s needlessly quirky style as well, the duo do manage to clothe the film’s stars in a number of memorable outfits. (This writer was particularly fond of the top hat-centric look Robbie rocks in  Amsterdam ‘s second act.)

The film’s visual achievements are not enough to rescue Amsterdam . The film is a creative and directorial miss that feels doomed from its tedious opening moments all the way to its emotionally hollow final frames. What could have been a messy but, at the very least, delightfully exuberant 90-minute conspiracy comedy has been rendered as a 135-minute wannabe prestige production. Every line of dialogue sounds like it was intended to be thrown out like a fastball but was instead read at half-speed, which leaves many of Amsterdam ’s scenes with the kind of dead pauses that only grind its momentum to an even greater halt.

Between this, Joy , and American Hustle , it seems safe to say that whatever goodwill O. Russell had accrued with The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook has since dried up. Much like the poisoned veteran at the center of its story, Amsterdam is simply dead on arrival.

Amsterdam is now playing in theaters.

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Review: ‘Amsterdam’ wastes incredible talent on a dull story

This image released by 20th Century Studios shows, from left, Christian Bale, Margot Robbie and John David Washington in a scene from “Amsterdam.” (Merie Weismiller Wallace/20th Century Studios via AP)

This image released by 20th Century Studios shows, from left, John David Washington, Margot Robbie, Rami Malek and Anya Taylor-Joy in a scene from “Amsterdam.” (Merie Weismiller Wallace/20th Century Studios via AP)

This image released by 20th Century Studios shows, from left, Michael Shannon, Mike Myers, Christian Bale, Chris Rock and Robert De Niro in a scene from “Amsterdam.” (Merie Weismiller Wallace/20th Century Studios via AP)

This image released by 20th Century Studios shows, clockwise from left, Anya Taylor-Joy, Rami Malek, Christian Bale, Robert De Niro and Margot Robbie in a scene from “Amsterdam.” (Merie Weismiller Wallace/20th Century Studios via AP)

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The stars appear one after the other — a banquet of talent, a glut of inventiveness — and yet nothing clicks. Hollywood’s most famous squirm in a slog.

Welcome to “Amsterdam,” writer and director David O. Russell’s answer to the question: Can some of the top actors in the world manage to elevate poor material? The answer is a dull no. It becomes a slaughterhouse.

Just look at this lead cast: Christian Bale, Margot Robbie and John David Washington. Russell wastes them with pointless dialogue and tedious scenes.

Then imagine a second tier of roles with Alessandro Nivola, Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Rock, Michael Shannon, Mike Myers, Taylor Swift, Zoe Saldaña, Rami Malek and Robert De Niro. All are left powerless. They are in a charisma-removal machine.

Bale and Washington play World War I veterans and fierce friends — soldiers who crossed the racial divide in France — and Robbie plays an inventive nurse who treats them. This bonded trio stumble onto a plot to overthrow the U.S. government while being framed for murder in 1930s New York.

It uses these three fictional characters to explore a real event in the runup to the Second World War in which a cabal of wealthy American businessmen conspired to overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt by duping a retired general popular among veterans into being their figurehead.

“Amsterdam” shifts from 1933 to 1918 as it fills out backstories and love affairs. After returning to the ‘30s, Bale has become a kindly doctor and Washington’s character becomes a lawyer, both helping fellow vets. The nurse is strung out on prescription drugs.

But unable to find a tone — screwball, noir, whodunit, rom-com, satire or thriller — the film plods along at its own airless, internal pace, leaving most of the actors so befuddled it’s not always clear they know what they’re aiming at either.

It’s a film where no one seems to answer a direct question, gruesome autopsies are performed on camera followed by whimsically sung ditties, and a script that tries for the profound when it says things like people “follow the wrong God home.”

“This is so strange,” says the good doctor at one point. “What does it mean?” Don’t ask us.

“Amsterdam” reaches for something contemporary to say about race relations, concentration of wealth, veterans and fascism but ends up with a plodding, mannerist noise. This is what dollar bills must smell like burning. One starts to wonder if it was all a tax write-off.

Take Bale, who already reached his glass-eye limit onscreen when he starred in “Big Short.” Somehow he agreed to another such role, this time with the eyeball popping out numerous times and spilling on the ground. He attacks his role with a weird “Columbo” thing going, tilting angularly and adopting a rich New York accent.

Washington and Robbie have apparently chosen to ignore Bale’s lead by acting as if they are in two separate and different movies — she plays a manic pixie artist who uses shrapnel to make sculptures and he makes his character stone-faced and passive. Everyone else seems to be badly mimicking old ‘30s films. (Swift sings at one point but otherwise she is marooned and wooden.)

It’s not just the cast that is taken down: Emmanuel Lubezki, a celebrated director of photography who wowed with “Gravity” and “The Revenant,” turns in a film that seems very brown and undynamic.

Russell, the director of such taut dramas as “Three Kings” and “American Hustle,” has clearly vanished here. You can almost hear the collective rejoinder from the real city of Amsterdam: Why’d you do us dirty, man?

“Amsterdam,” a 20th Century Studios release exclusively for movie theaters starting Friday, is rated R for brief violence and bloody images. Running time: 134 minutes. No stars out of four.

MPAA definition of R: Restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

Online: https://www.20thcenturystudios.com/movies/amsterdam

Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

'Amsterdam' review: Film is packed with big names but falls short

How do theaters get paying customers back after a punishing pandemic turned us into stay-at-home slugs, except when we paid up for "Top Gun: Maverick" and Marvel epics?

Hollywood's commercial future depends on the right answer. For "Amsterdam," the pokey and problematic mystery romp now in theaters, the solution points to stars. Pack as many big names as possible into a two-hour running time and you're in for box office gold. Maybe.

"Amsterdam" writer and director David O. Russell ("American Hustle," "Silver Linings Playbook") spared no expense to lure in Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Rock, Mike Myers, Rami Malek, Zoe Saldana, Robert De Niro and Taylor Swift, on a break from writing hate ballads about her cheating boyfriends. What could go wrong?

As it turns out, quite a bit. The critics' consensus on Rotten Tomatoes talks about "a bunch of big stars and a very busy plot, all of which amounts to painfully less than the sum of its dazzling parts." Ouch! Talk about reviews you can't take to the bank.

But hold on a breath. Before dispatching "Amsterdam" to the scrap heap of failed ambitions, let's at least credit Russell for trying to twist old formulas into surprising new shapes.

At the core of "Amsterdam" is a friendship among World War I combat veterans Dr. Burt Berendsen (Bale), attorney Harold Woodman (Washington) and nurse Valerie Voze (Robbie), who makes art out of the shrapnel she digs out of the bodies of wounded soldiers.

Cue an idyllic flashback to 1918 when the three bond in Amsterdam away from a war that neglects the wounds of Burt, a painkiller addict who loses an eye, and Harold whose interracial romance with Valerie echoes the bigotry he experienced fighting for his country.

MORE: 'The Good House' review: Sigourney Weaver deserves a nod for best actress

Fifteen years later, Burt and Harold are being accused of the murder of their beloved battalion leader Bill Meekins (Ed Begley Jr.), whose daughter Liz (Swift) comes to them for autopsy help at the behest of Valerie, whose brother Tom (Malek) and bristling wife Libby (a fine, feisty Taylor-Joy) uncover another plot within a plot wrapped in an enigma.

That leads our trio to Gen. Gil Dillenback, played by a terrific, tightly controlled De Niro, the commander of the 369th New York Regiment, in which Burt and Harold served. The fictional Dillenbeck recalls the very real Gen. Smedley Butler, who a business consortium wanted to use in a military coup to usurp the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt in favor of a fascist dictatorship.

"A lot of this really happened," states the film's title card. I'll say. The modern parallels to Trump and the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection are hard to miss. But to what end? Instead of making a drama, romance, satire, farce, trauma treatise or political allegory, Russell plunges headlong into all of them and the resulting collision deprives the film of point and purpose.

Russell courts controversy on camera and off, including accusations of bullying and sexual misconduct. It's been seven years since Russell took heat for the lame Jennifer Lawrence vehicle "Joy" and "Amsterdam" isn't much to show for all that time away.

MORE: 'Don't Worry Darling' review: Florence Pugh ranks with the best of her generation

Still, there's no doubting the full-tilt commitment of Bale, Robbie, Washington and the other actors caught in this muddled clash of cockeyed optimism and hopelessness. Russell remains a rare bird in cookie-cutter Hollywood, eagerly biting the hand that feeds him.

With "Amsterdam," the untamed Russell is only felt in fits and starts. But he's there, rattling cages. Even when you count Russell down, he's never really out. Who'd want it any other way?

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‘The Idea of You’ Review: Only Anne Hathaway Could Look This Confident Dating One of Her Daughter’s Pop Idols

Hathaway’s rockin' single-mom character doesn't need a boyfriend, much less a boy-band fling to fulfill her. But her on-and-off romance with Nicholas Galitzine's smitten pop star feels like one for the ages.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

• ‘The Idea of You’ Review: Only Anne Hathaway Could Look This Confident Dating One of Her Daughter’s Pop Idols 7 days ago
• ‘The Greatest Hits’ Review: Music Makes the Heart Go Round in Clunky Remix of Better Rom-Coms 1 week ago
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When you’re 10, it sounds like every line your favorite boy band sings is being aimed directly at you. Somewhere along the way, the illusion shatters. Teenagers are smarter than we give them credit for, and they eventually figure out how parasocial relationships operate: Basically, the fans do all the work, saving up for concert tickets and glitter-painting their idols’ names on their notebooks, while the lab-tested singers soak up all the love … and the allowance money. But what if, instead of the feelings flowing in one direction, a pop star fell hard for one of his followers? Or her mom?

Dad bought them all VIP passes to a meet-and-greet with August Moon, the band Izzy used to be obsessed with in seventh grade (emphasis on “used to be”). Now that she’s in high school, the fivesome just seems corny — which is the same opinion parents had all along, but somehow had to put aside to support their kids. So imagine Solène’s surprise when she goes looking for the honey bucket and winds up face-to-face with Hayes Campbell (Nicholas Galitzine), “the British one.” Solène recognizes him, but doesn’t get all star-struck, and something about that dynamic excites him. Here’s a woman he might actually have to put some effort into getting to know.

Miraculously enough, audiences don’t question it. The meet-cute seems a little contrived, but the chemistry between Hathaway and Galitzine feels real. She subtly conveys signals that show she’s lost faith in romance, suggesting that because Solène’s been burned by love before, she can’t be bothered to flirt. For his part, Galitzine plays Hayes as instantly interested, but emotionally cautious as well. Watching these two warm up to one another over the course of an art-shopping afternoon back in Los Angeles proves far more romantic than the whirlwind tour of Europe that follows. Surprisingly, the sexiest scene in the whole film doesn’t involve sex but a hungry first kiss — though there’s steam enough to come, as they ravage hotel rooms in Barcelona, Rome and Paris.

In a sense, the eponymous “idea of you” refers to an aspect of the relationship Solène naively thinks she can keep to herself, despite the vulture-like way the paparazzi follow them everywhere. Showalter takes us into a pop star’s inner circle, bringing the cameras backstage at concerts, aboard private jets and along for a glitzy vacation in the south of France. (Weirdly, reverse shots of the arena-show crowds seem downright tame, nothing like the delirious hysteria of “A Hard Day’s Night” or “TRL.”) Celebrities belong to the public in a way civilian Solène has never experienced before, and because she wants no part of that attention, their love affair may as well have no future.

That’s one aspect of the book that upset its readers, and which Showalter has carefully reengineered here so that audiences can have the ending they want. For all its fantastical qualities, the movie is realistic in the way it anticipates social media and real media (the online tabloids, at least) reacting to the news of Solène and Hayes’ being together. It’s a sad truth that, as Solène tells art-world bestie Tracy (Annie Mumolo), the world doesn’t want her to be happy. Technically, the fans don’t want Hayes to be happy either, preferring to think of him as single and searching for them to fill that empty space in his heart.

There are a thousand ways that Showalter could have tilted the film toward parody. Instead, he resists poking fun at the whole pop-tart phenomenon, which meta-comedies like “Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping” and “Josie and Pussycats” treated as self-aware satire. Here, Hayes is terrified of being seen as a joke, and though Solène insists he’s not, she doesn’t take the relationship seriously enough to tell a soul. But Showalter does, tapping songwriter Savan Kotecha to come up with a slew of plausible hits, including a track called “Closer” that turns the May-December dynamic into catchy Top 40 gold. For all the challenges that adapting Lee’s book posed, getting the music right had to be the toughest — with fixing that ending being a close second.

Reviewed at SXSW (Headliners, closer), March 16, 2024. MPA Rating: R. Running time: 116 MIN.

• Production: A Prime Video release of a Amazon MGM Studios presentation of a Somewhere Pictures, Welle Entertainment production. Producers: Cathy Schulman, Gabrielle Union, Anne Hathaway, Robinne Lee, Eric Hayes, Michael Showalter, Jordana Mollick. Executive producers: Douglas S. Jones, Jason Babiszewski, Jennifer Westfeldt, Kian Gass.
• Crew: Director: Michael Showalter. Screenplay: Michael Showalter, Jennifer Westfeldt, based on the book by Robinne Lee. Camera: Jim Frohna. Editor: Peter Teschner. Music: Siddhartha Khosla. Music supervisor: Frankie Pine.
• With: Anne Hathaway, Nicholas Galitzine, Ella Rubin, Annie Mumolo, Reid Scott, Perry Mattfeld, Jordan Aaron Hall, Mathilda Gianopoulos, Raymond Cham Jr., Jaiden Anthony, Viktor White, Dakota Adan.

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New Amsterdam Sequel Set 30 Years After the Original Series in the Works at NBC

The series came to an end in January 2023 after five seasons

Ralph Bavaro/NBC via Getty

The doors to New Amsterdam Hospital will be reopened!

New Amsterdam showrunner, executive producer, and creator David Schulner is developing a spinoff series based on the beloved NBC show, Deadline reports.

The series — tentatively titled New Amsterdam: Tomorrow — is set to take place 30 years after the original, with Dr. Max Goodwin's ( Ryan Eggold ) daughter, Luna Goodwin, taking over as Medical Director of New Amsterdam Hospital, per the outlet.

It's been nearly 14 months since fans unknowingly saw the layout for the new spinoff being set up in the series finale when Molly Griggs played an adult version of Luna.

Ralph Bavaro/NBC via Getty 

In the final moments of the episode, a grown-up Luna speaks in front of hospital staff as the new medical director and opens up about how she was inspired to become a doctor because of her father.

"I wanted to start by asking you the same thing my father asked his staff every hour of every single day: how can I help?" she later added.

Although it is unclear if Griggs or Eggold will appear in the new series, Deadline reports that fans can expect the show to "explore the ways artificial intelligence would help advance the medical industry in the future."

NBC confirmed that New Amsterdam would end after five seasons in March 2022. The news came as a shock for many fans, as the show had received a  three-season renewal  in January 2020. At the time, the series was in the middle of its second season, and NBC estimated that it was averaging almost 10 million viewers.

Peter Kramer/NBC via Getty 

Apart from Eggold, the original series featured Janet Montgomery , Jocko Sims , Freema Agyeman , Tyler Labine, and Anupam Kher.

"When I first read the pilot script for  New Amsterdam , I knew we had a winner. We cheered Max's disruption of the status quo and applauded when he asked his patients the simple yet profound question, 'How can I help?'" said Erin Underhill, the President of Universal Television, in a statement after the announcement was made.

"Over the last four seasons, David, Peter and our incredible cast have tackled important and thought-provoking stories that have touched on the human condition, but also made us laugh and imbued hope. We're so proud of this series and are indebted to everyone involved in bringing  New Amsterdam  to life. Bravo," the statement continued.

After its series finale, the show's Instagram posted a message to fans, sharing, "Thank you  #DamFam , we hope we were able to help. ❤️ All 5 seasons of  #NewAmsterdam  are streaming now on  @peacocktv ."

Never miss a story — sign up for  PEOPLE's free daily newsletter  to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. 

New Amsterdam is streaming in full on Peacock.

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‘Immaculate’ Review: Sydney Sweeney Is Wide-Eyed but Sly

The actress stars as a fresh-faced nun who, by the end of this erotic thriller-horror mash-up, runs amok in her convent.

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By Manohla Dargis

Damsels in distress take different forms and come with diverse temperaments, skill sets and screams. The standard-bearer tends to be a pretty young thing who has enough life in her that you don’t want it or her snuffed out (well, usually). Sometimes she’s babysitting in suburbia; at other times she is tiptoeing around a mansion with dark secrets and groaning floorboards. Every so often, she turns up wearing a nun’s habit, cloistered in a convent where things are never as they seem, as is the case in the slickly diverting, undercooked shocker “Immaculate.”

Set in the Italian countryside far from Rome — in more ways than one — “Immaculate” is a scare-fest with a plucky heroine, an irreverent hot-button twist and just enough narrative ambiguity to give viewers something to argue about. The time is the present, give or take a few years, and the place is a grim, gray stone convent with sweeping grounds and formidably high walls. With a remodel and better lighting, the building could pass for one of those castles for princesses and their happily-ever-afters. The creepy opening scene and sepulchral vibe here, though, suggest that whatever happens next will definitely be very unhappy.

Working from Andrew Lobel’s script, the director Michael Mohan delivers his damsel — a fresh-faced American, Cecilia, played by Sydney Sweeney — to the convent with unceremonious briskness. As she meets and greets her new sisters in faith, Mohan zips around, providing a sense of its scale and labyrinthine interior (and exits). The overly compressed 89-minute running time doesn’t allow him to linger, so he tends to go fuzzy and generic. Cecilia’s back story is conveniently vague, for one: She’s come to serve God and surrender herself body and soul. Mostly, she is there because it strategically isolates the character, limits her choices and gives the movie a dank whiff of Old World exoticism.

Some details and faces quickly stand out, including an ingratiating, uneasily friendly priest (Álvaro Morte) and the no-nonsense mother superior (Dora Romano), who keeps both old and young in line. As Cecilia settles in, she befriends one of the other novices (the appealing Benedetta Porcaroli) and fields puzzling hostility from a young nun (Giulia Heathfield Di Renzi). Cecilia also encounters a wizened nun with large cross-shaped scars on the soles of her feet. That’s certainly a grabber, but so too is a communal bathing scene in which Cecilia and some of the other younger women pose prettily in a vaulted room, lounging and grooming in semitransparent bathing gowns that reveal just how fit they are.

Much as Mohan did in the 2021 movie “ The Voyeurs ,” his take on the old-fashioned (a.k.a. 1980s and ’90s) erotic thriller, he is doing his part in “Immaculate” to resurrect another disreputable film favorite. In the earlier thriller, Sweeney plays a Peeping Tom whose habit of spying on her hot, hump-happy neighbors leads to a familiar overheated mix of sex, violence and vengeance. If the milieu and Sweeney’s character are more interesting in “Immaculate,” it’s partly because of the convent’s relative foreignness. What Mohan has largely done here, though, is whip up a genre pastiche that shrewdly combines horror-movie frights, paranoid-woman thrills and the special kinky pleasures of 1970s-style nunsploitation.

“Immaculate” is considerably tamer than that subgenre’s wilder exemplars, like the 1974 Japanese film “ School of the Holy Beast ” with its whips, thorny roses and weird nuns. (Paul Verhoeven’s “ Benedetta ,” from 2021, is ostensibly higher brow.) Even so, things get strange and stranger when Cecilia becomes pregnant and her “Song of Bernadette” adventure edges into “Rosemary’s Baby” terrain, or so it seems. Like a lot of contemporary movies that play like feature-length elevator pitches, “Immaculate” works best at the start, when mystery still envelops the characters and their world. Once its parts are in place, the movie skims and skimps, rushing to wrap everything up before its banging finale.

“Immaculate” doesn’t try to reinvent anything but instead cheerfully embraces the familiar, which is part of what makes the movie enjoyable. It borrows from established genres and reliable conventions, deploys shock cuts and jump scares and simultaneously winks at the audience and tries to make it squirm. Better yet, Mohan and Sweeney together turn a vaguely sketched, potentially iffy character into the kind of heroine whose survival becomes the movie’s very reason for being. Sweeney’s full-throttle performance is crucial in this regard because it smartly exploits her looks, or rather our perceptions of what a wide-eyed, innocent babe is capable of, slyly drawing us in before she goes deliriously, bloodily amok.

Immaculate Rated R for horror-movie gore and violence against chickens. Running time: 1 hour 29 minutes. In theaters.

Manohla Dargis is the chief film critic for The Times. More about Manohla Dargis

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Civil War review – Alex Garland’s immersive yet dispassionate war film

The writer-director’s much-anticipated look at the horrors of an America violently divided is an impressive technical feat yet an emotionally cold drama

• ‘We know why it might happen’: Alex Garland’s explosive thriller Civil War premieres

C ivil War, Alex Garland’s hotly anticipated dystopian drama on an America divided by military conflict, knows what we’re looking for. The film opens with the president ( Nick Offerman ) in profile, practicing lines as he prepares to address the nation. His assurances of strength and patriotism are interwoven with seemingly real, recent news footage: a flash of riot gear, police armed like soldiers, masses against shields, two seconds of a body being dragged. Garland, the writer-director behind such modern sci-fi hits as Ex Machina and Annihilation , doesn’t have to show much from 2020 or beyond to get the point across. We’ll fill in the rest.

This is good news for those who feared Civil War would swerve too close to the present election-year polarization for comfort, or wring entertainment out of the beyond oversaturated national presence and specter of Donald Trump. Civil War, which premiered at the SXSW film festival , introduces the connection and then summarily abandons recognizable politics for the dispassionate work of combat journalists in the moral gray area of the war zone. In a year of red-hot tension and fear, Civil War runs cold – decidedly anti-war but firmly unspecific, assiduously avoiding any direct correlation to current politics or, it turns out, any politics at all.

The film begins well into a conflict in which Texas and California are allies in the “Western Front” (Florida is also joining) against the federal government. The three-term president has authorized drone strikes against civilians and disbanded the FBI, we learn in clunky journalist chatter, but this is war: everyone is killing each other. Both sides have a military. There are no discernible ideologies beyond winning. To the protagonists of this film – hard-boiled Lee (an excellent Kirsten Dunst ), adrenaline junkie Joel (Wagner Moura), hotshot newbie Jessie (Priscilla’s Cailee Spaeny) and mentor Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) – there is only work to do, conflict to follow, evidence to capture.

Civil War is just as much road movie as war movie, as the journalists travel from contested New York, where residents scrounge and riot for water, through the eastern US (Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia) to the Western Front’s frontline in Charlottesville and then DC. The goal is to score the last interview with the president in a zone where journalists are, as Sammy says, shot on sight. (“Interviewing him is the only story left,” says Joel, which never makes sense.) As a suspense thriller, Civil War is very successful – Garland has a knack for the choreography of conflict, for tuning up the mutual suspicion of every encounter with a stranger (as both sides use US army fatigues, it’s hard to know who is who, and it doesn’t matter as long as they’re not trying to kill Lee’s convoy). Civil War is A24’s most expensive production, and it shows. Garland’s rendering of the war-torn suburban US is a fascinating mix of beautiful and horrifying – a shellshocked JC Penney’s, bodies hanging from a highway overpass, an abandoned Christmas festival in the summer. Perversions of Americans’ sense of stability, lush and dexterously deployed.

Civil War works on the level of intellectual exercise: a film clear-eyed on the horrors of war and trauma in which journalists are the unsentimental heroes, and which relies on the audience to supply their own assumptions of American politics rather than spoon-feed reality. But the distance makes for an at times frustrating watch – stimulating on the level of adrenaline, not emotions. In part, the internal logic feels off – who’s the audience for these journalists, if there’s no cell service and no one appears to use the internet? Why would these images matter, in a divided future nation that has, I presume, fully lost shared reality? There really aren’t any bleeding hearts in this journalist crew?

It’s true that righteousness matters little to those caught in the violence of war, but Civil War’s strict indifference to motivation rankles a little, considering the very stark ideological divide between political parties today or America’s actual civil war, which was fought over the cut-and-dried issue of slavery and then strategically whitewashed over decades into a tale of “states’ rights”. Garland’s Civil War gives little to hold on to on the level of character or world-building, which leaves us with effective but limited visual provocation – the capital in flames, empty highways, a viscerally tense shootout in the White House. The brutal images of war, but not the messy hearts or minds behind them.

Civil War is screening at the SXSW festival and will be released in US and UK cinemas on 12 April

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