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STUFFED WITH STARS

Amsterdam has a great cast

CHRIS KNIGHT cknight@postmedia.com twitter.com/chrisknightfilm

Amsterdam is writer-director David O. Russell's contribution to what might be called the genre of overstuffed fiction. Recent examples include Don't Look Up by Adam Mckay and Guillermo del Toro's Nightmare Alley, both from last year.

All bear similar hallmarks. There's the extended running time; Amsterdam is shortest of the three, at two hours and 14 minutes. There's a massive cast that makes it seem easier to list who's not in it — this one includes supporting work by Robert De Niro, Chris Rock, Zoe Saldana, Andrea Riseborough, Anya Taylor-joy, Rami Malek and Taylor Swift, along with the film's three leads.

And there's a rattling, runaway-train pacing to the story. Amsterdam opens in 1933 New York before reeling back to the Great War and shifting its setting to the European theatre, only to (eventually) catch up with where we started and then plunge pell-mell into a plot to destroy America. Oh, and as the opening titles note: “A lot of this really happened.”

Christian Bale stars as Burt Berendsen, a one-eyed doctor (war wound don't you know?) and best friends with his old army buddy Harold Woodman (John David Washington), who now works as a lawyer. They are approached by socialite Liz Meekins (Swift) with an entreaty to investigate the possible murder of her father, a Senator. She's convinced his death during an overseas voyage is suspicious at best. But before they can find out who she thinks did it, they are framed for her own murder.

An extended flashback to the final days of the First World War serves to introduce the final main character, field hospital nurse Valerie Voze (Margot Robbie), who turns battlefield shrapnel into art, and who falls for the two wounded soldiers, although her more primal affections are reserved for Harold. Burt seems happy to tag along as their mutual friend during a Bohemian idyll in between-the-wars Amsterdam. But eventually all three will be drawn back into more adult pursuits in America.

The basic structure of Amsterdam is a murder-mystery, though there's a fair bit of romance and even a little humour woven into the plot.

There are also some lovely lines in Russell's screenplay.

“The dream repeats because the dream forgets itself,” says Robbie's character, smoothly predicting the nightmare of another world war. Later we hear the maxim: “Love is not enough. You've got to fight to protect kindness.” There is also a repeated refrain about “following the right god home.” As near as I can tell it is a reference drawn from A Ritual to Read to Each Other by the 20th-century poet and pacifist William Stafford. Regardless of its pedigree, it is a beautiful phrase, full of hope and mystery, and a lovely take-away from the movie. Then there are supporting characters who feel like they have entire movies of their own that we've just never seen. Matthias Schoenaerts and Alessandro Nivola play detectives Getweiler and Hiltz, one of them as racistly efficient in his work as Sam Rockwell's character in Three Billboards.

But my favourite secondary players have to be Michael Shannon and Mike Myers, undercover operatives of U.S. Naval Intelligence and Britain's MI6, respectively, who combine the best traits of spycraft and birding in a way that will have you nodding: “Well, of course they do both.”

Early reviews for Amsterdam have been mixed, as they say, and its box office fortunes may well be muted. Recall that Nightmare Alley made less than $40 million in that pandemic year, though it was also up against Spider-man: No Way Home. Don't Look Up is harder to parse. Nielsen ratings gave its Netflix release 1.6-billion eyeball minutes in the U.S., which is not an easy metric to square with cinema ticket sales. Both films were Oscar nominated for best picture. Neither won.

I gave Don't Look Up a grudging three stars out of five, and Nightmare Alley an enthusiastic four. I'm tempted to split the difference with this one, but ultimately it features far more great moments than bad ones. I was exhausted when it was over. But Amster'damn I liked it!

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2022-10-07T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-10-07T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://edmontonjournal.pressreader.com/article/281852942464631

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