BEFORE: it's last call for Anya Taylor-Joy as she carries over from "Radioactive" and simultaneously causes a three-way tie at the top of my appearances leader board. So now we've got a game...
I worked at a screening of a film called "A Thousand and One" on Sunday night, it won the Dramatic Prize at Sundance this year, but I'd never heard of it. Anyway, not that many people attended, the night before was a screening of "Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves" and the night after was "John Wick: Chapter 4" so maybe this little Sundance film just couldn't stand out, I don't know. Tonight I managed a screening of "Everything Went Fine", which is a French film about a woman helping her 85-year old father die after a stroke. So, yeah, good times all around.
I've got a shift on Thursday, but then I've got all of Easter weekend off, so I can catch up on some TV at home. But I really should be planning another trip up to visit my parents, also I need to start thinking about getting another job this summer, as the theater's going to be closed for July and August.
THE PLOT: In the 1930's, three friends witness a murder, are framed for it, and uncover one of the most outrageous plots in American history.
AFTER: I'll admit, I was confused for MOST of this film, I couldn't really tell what the pieces were all adding up to, just that it had something to do with a military man's murder, and a couple of World War I veterans (a white doctor and a black lawyer) who served under him, trying to solve his murder. By way of explanation (allegedly), the film flashes back to the two men's time spent in Amsterdam while recovering from their war wounds, under the care of an American nurse (who's also some kind of artist) and who one of the men falls in love with. But the pieces still weren't coming together for me, but hey, if that's all there is my friend, then let's keep dancing, let's break out the booze and have a ball.
But there IS more here, and it's my fault, because I'm not up on my U.S. history, I'm blissfully unaware of the historical event being referenced here, and in the end, it's rather ironic that I watched this on the same day an ex-president is getting arraigned for the first time in U.S. history, because the event known as the "Business Plot" in 1933 was something of a fore-runner to the January 6th Insurrection of 2021. So now I have to wonder if "Amsterdam" is somehow about Trump, albeit in a roundabout way, because the film production took place between January and June of 2021 - maybe it wasn't about Trump at first, but somehow got influenced by the news - or maybe there's no connection at all, and I'm forcing one to exist.
Anyway, the Business Plot of 1933 was (allegedly) a conspiracy to overthrow the government of Franklin Roosevelt, and install a dictator named Smedley Butler (I swear) as a fascist dictator. Sounds somewhat relevant to recent events, right? (I know, Trump got arraigned today for "fraudulent business practices" (aka paying hush money to a porn star) so the connection would have been better for me if he were arraigned for his role in the Jan. 6 Insurrection, but that's OK, I have faith that one day soon, we're going to get there. (Mark my words, they're testing the water in the shallow end of the pool, hopefully in 6 months time we'll be diving into the deep end of ex-Presidential prosecution. Remember, Trump failed to pardon himself when he was still in office, that could be important.)
The plan was to create a (figurative) army of (literal) U.S. veterans, most of whom were unhappy because they hadn't been paid the bonuses they were owed from the World War Adjusted Compensation Act of 1924. By 1932, they were all pretty pissed that their money was 8 years late, and they marched on Washington, led by Sgt. Walter Waters, and they were encouraged by an appearance from retired Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler. President Hoover ordered the marchers removed (because that's what you SHOULD do when an army of men attack the Capitol) and in retaliation, Butler supported FDR in the next election.
Butler later testified that he was approached to lead a coup, with an army of 500,000 men to march on Washington and take control, replacing the President, whose health was failing. The plan was for Butler to assume the new role of "Secretary of General Affairs", with Roosevelt remaining in a figurehead role. How much of this testimony was true, how much was false and how much was hearsay is a bit unclear, so we may never know how close the U.S. President came to losing power in 1933 - there were committee hearings to figure out what happened, or what almost happened, just like there were for the January 6th Insurrection. There simply couldn't be a more timely historical event to examine, if we want to gain some insight into the similar (?) plot that took place 88 years later.
So why is this film still so confusing? Admittedly, if I had known about the Business Plot before watching "Amsterdam", it could have been extremely helpful. But the film is so damn vague about everything, even if I went back and watched it again with the knowledge I have now, I doubt that much would get cleared up. With the main characters spending SO MUCH damn time in the movie also trying to figure things out, there's a lot that could have been made clearer a lot sooner. I'm going to fall back on the excuse that I was confused for so long because the characters were also confused about what, exactly was going on.
So why is this film still so confusing? Admittedly, if I had known about the Business Plot before watching "Amsterdam", it could have been extremely helpful. But the film is so damn vague about everything, even if I went back and watched it again with the knowledge I have now, I doubt that much would get cleared up. With the main characters spending SO MUCH damn time in the movie also trying to figure things out, there's a lot that could have been made clearer a lot sooner. I'm going to fall back on the excuse that I was confused for so long because the characters were also confused about what, exactly was going on.
Also, this is the first film in seven years directed by David O. Russell, and some of his films are a bit hit-or-miss when it comes to being clear and easily understood. Some people are STILL trying to figure out "I Heart Huckabees", and it's been nearly 20 years since that was released. "Flirting With Disaster" and "Silver Linings Playbook" were relatively straight-forward ensemble relationship-based films, but "Amsterdam" is probably closest to "American Hustle", which took its inspiration from another U.S. political scandal, the FBI Abscam operation of the late 1970's.
What's unclear in "Amsterdam", apart from nearly everything, is how the murder of a senator (who happened to be that general back in WWI who commanded the regiment with the future doctor and future lawyer in it) was going to be instrumental in the plot to take over the U.S. government, if in fact that's what was happening here. Sure, there's an autopsy, but one then has to wonder if the autopsy was designed to help solve the mystery or just to give Burt a better long-term romantic option with the medical examiner than getting back together with his estranged wife.
And where did the daughter of the general (played by Taylor Swift) figure into things? Besides hiring Burt and Harold to solve her father's murder (and triggering the extensive flashback sequence set in Amsterdam), what purpose did she serve? The film seems to indicate that this character is no longer needed by having her run over by a truck - thereby serving segments of the populace, the ones who LOVE Taylor Swift and the ones who HATE Taylor Swift. We are nothing if not a very divided country.
At least following the clues of the murder puts Burt and Harold back in touch with Valerie, who they hadn't seen since shortly after the war ended (about what, fifteen years later?). So there's that, at least both male leads have possible romantic interests in the works. We may get a happy ending after all, assuming the government doesn't get overthrown. General Dillenbeck is the stand-in for Smedley Butler (again, I swear this is the real name of a real historical figure who I only JUST learned about tonight...) and he's paid to appear at the World War I veteran's reunion and read a speech which will rally the veterans into creating that army that will take down the President (umm, I think...) but instead he chooses to read his own speech instead of the one he was hired to read, and this puts him in danger, there's a hit-man ready to take him off the board if he doesn't do what was planned.
And so the integrity of the Union is preserved, the natural order of things is restored, the President is still the President and nobody ever, ever tried to mess with the political process or the electoral college or the transition of power again. Yeah, right. You know what, it's safer to just move back to Amsterdam and not take any chances. You might have to do that anyway, if your movie is so inaccessible that it bombs and loses $97 million for the studio.
Also starring Christian Bale (last seen in "Thor: Love and Thunder"), Margot Robbie (last seen in "The Suicide Squad"), John David Washington (last seen in "Monster"), Alessandro Nivola (last seen in "The Many Saints of Newark"), Andrea Riseborough (last seen in "The Electrical Life of Louis Wain"), Chris Rock (last heard in "The Witches"), Matthias Schoenaerts (last seen in "The Old Guard"), Michael Shannon (last seen in "The Runaways"), Mike Myers (last seen in "Space Jam: A New Legacy"), Taylor Swift (last seen in "Jagged"), Timothy Olyphant (last seen in "The Starling"), Zoe Saldana (last seen in "Infinitely Polar Bear"), Rami Malek (last seen in "No Time to Die"), Robert De Niro (last seen in "Being Flynn"), Ed Begley Jr. (last seen in "Wolfgang"), Colleen Camp (last seen in "Knock Knock"), Casey Biggs (last seen in "Too Big to Fail"), Dey Young (last seen in "Rock 'n' Roll High School"), Beth Grant (last seen in "Willy's Wonderland"), Tom Irwin (last seen in "On the Basis of Sex"), Leland Orser (last seen in "The Good German"), David Babbitt, Mel Fair (last seen in "Without Remorse"), Vaughn Page, Bonnie Hellman (last seen in "Some Kind of Beautiful"), Max Perlich (last seen in "Drugstore Cowboy"), Jessica Drake, Gabé Doppelt, Sean Avery, Gigi Bermingham (last seen in "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever"), Casey Graf, Rebecca Wisocky (last seen in "Blonde"), Daniel Riordan, Steven Hack, Floyd Armstrong, Leonard Tucker, Richard Harrington, John Pirkis (last seen in "The Young Victoria"), Christopher Gehrman, Dalila Ali Rajah, Timothy Donovan, Valeria Malikova, Alef Orixa, with archive footage of Adolf Hitler (last seen in "Operation Mincemeat"), Benito Mussolini
RATING: 4 out of 10 facial prosthetics
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