Hustlers Bared It All

Hustlers (2019)

Hustlers was a weird movie to watch with my mom. It is based on a true story of a group of exotic dancers who defrauded dozens of Wall Street types after the 2008 market collapse. They ran a nefarious scam that involved drugging and essentially kidnapping investors and up-charging their credit cards. And they would have gotten away with it if they were multi-millionaire men who defrauded and up-charged millions of middle and lower class Americans during that same time period. In fact, they would have been rewarded with government bailouts if they were multi-millionaire executives, which makes rooting for the girls easy. Taking this in tandem with The Big Short, another Adam McKay movie, I learned more about the 2008 financial crisis and its impacts than I did by watching the news while it happened. Hustlers, like The Big Short, used its all star cast performing at their best to bring to life an interesting story with complex characters. Jennifer Lopez and Constance Wu carry the movie on their fur cloaked and glittered backs. Each leads a double life, one real and relatable and the other, a life of faux-celebrity, with the thinnest of veils between them. Their characters were raw and supremely well acted and they brought the movie to another tier. With lesser actors than Lopez and Wu, this movie would have not just been worse, but would have been terrible. On the merits of the cast and the relatable story, I found Hustlers to be one of the most intriguing and best-done movies of the year. I give Hustlers 1-700 out of a 1-900 phone number (that is a dirty talk phone number for readers who never knew about life before the internet).