Hustlers * (2019, Constance Wu, Jennifer Lopez, Julia Stiles ) – Movie Review

Writer-director Lorene Scafaria’s 2019 comedy crime drama Hustlers tells the real-life tale of a group of female strip club employees who go freelance and scam and rob their Wall Street male clients.

It is inspired by a New York Magazine article by Jessica Pressler. The women are shown as sympathetic victims of various men, the men running their strip club, their male clients and the unreasonable men running any other legitimate alternative employment the women could find. The women finally find themselves arrested when the unthinkable happens – a man whose work credit card is fraudulently maxed by the women reports them to the law.

A lot of effort is put into the work of making the women seem sympathetic – Destiny is doing it all for her lovely little old Grandmother (Wai Ching Ho) –  and the performances are winning, especially Constance Wu as Destiny and Jennifer Lopez as Ramona – but at the end of the day they are thieving criminals, drugging and ripping off their male clients.

Lorene Scafaria is evidently struggling to get together both her screenplay and her direction. As so often, the real-life material proves hard to turn into a coherent movie, largely defeating her. Unfortunately, real life and movies are very different things. The ‘Inspired by a True Story’ tagline is more of a threat than a promise.

A miserable-looking Julia Stiles plays Elizabeth, the journalist interviewing the heroine Destiny (Constance Wu) for her recollections. Mette Towley plays Justice, Keke Palmer plays Mercedes, Cardi B plays Diamond and Mercedes Ruehl plays Mother. It is a good cast.

It hardly works as a comedy crime drama. Unlike the legendary Showgirls, it is not a lot of fun. It is much more like the Demi Moore Striptease. It is all very tame and discreet on the female nudity, stripper, exotic dancer, pole-dancing front – where’s the sleaze? – and much stronger on the emotional female friendship front, with even a hint of lesbianism between Destiny and Ramona. Their relationship is certainly the most interesting item in the movie, and Wu and Lopez play it well.

It’s a hit. Costing $20,000,000, it grossed $69,164,711 in the US and $79,004,711 elsewhere.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Movie Review

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