Amsterdam the new murder-mystery film by David O. Russell turned out to be very disappointing for the critics. However, the trailer never anticipated how dissatisfying it would be this movie, since its reviews are far from positive. Although Amsterdam has a brilliant cast, the actors could not even make the movie better. The $80 million budget film with a two hour length is expected to arrive in theaters on October 7th in the United States, in Spain is set to premiere in November, on both dates the audience will find out if the movie is worth watching or not.
David O. Russell is back in the industry after seven years (his last movie was Joy in 2015) with this new project. The movie inspired on true events, set in the 30’s, follows the story of three friends, a doctor with a prosthetic eye, Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale), Harold Woodsman who is a lawyer (John David Washington) and a nurse called Valerie Voze (Margot Robbie). They are unfairly accused of murder and the film consist on them trying to clean their names. The story is set during Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s government. In the trailer it is shown how the characters will be involved in one of the most scandalous plots in United States history, known as the Wall Street Putsch scandal. Besides being director, Russell is also in charge of the movie script, alongside 20th Century Studios, Canterbury Classic and Forest Hill Entertainment in production.
What is striking about Amsterdam is neither its director, nor its story, but the brilliant cast it has. Even though Christian Bale, Margot Robbie and John David Washington star in the film, there are other huge names involved such as Robert De Niro, Anya Taylor-Joy, Michael Shannon, Rami Malek, Zoe Saldaña, Mike Myers, Timothy Olyphant, Matthias Schoenaerts, Chris Rock, Andrea Riseborough and Taylor Swift. The last one mentioned has been a surprise both for the public interested in the film and for the fans of Taylor Swift, known as Swifites. Although Swift only appeared 30 seconds in the trailer playing the role of Elizabeth “Liz” Meekins, it was enough for her fans to be excited. It is known that the successful singer is now re-recording all of her albums, in fact Swift had the time to be part of this project, so the real question is, will Swifties watch the movie for its plot or just for Taylor Swift?
In spite of its amazing cast, the critics did not receive Amsterdam with open arms. Rotten Tomatoes gave the film 28% out of 100%. “Aims to be cheeky and offbeat, but it’s exhausting instead, never finding its way as a quasi-farce about people in deep trouble” said Brian Orndorf from Blu-ray.com. Other big critics sites like IMDb and Metacritic, rated the movie 5.7 out of 10 and 49% out of 100 respectively.
Although the critics have not appreciated Amsterdam, people will still want to go to the cinema to watch it because in the end this industry (like the music industry) is subjective and they will also want to see so many stars together in a single movie.
Andrea Rich