Hustlers | Film Review

Hey Guys x

I wrote this post before Oscar season, but when reviewing and watching all of the nominated films, it got completely buried. Then after Oscar season, I got completely buried with work. But either way, here's my Hustlers review!

Destiny (Constance Wu) is a stripper who doesn't really know what she's doing - and she's not having a good time doing it. That is, until she meets Ramona (Jennifer Lopez), who takes Destiny under her wing and shows her the ropes of being a successful stripper. However, when a major economic collapse means that the strippers lose their clients, the girls have to come up with another way to make ends meet.

I really enjoyed this film, which I didn't think I would before going into it. I was really pleasantly surprised.

First of all, in and of itself it's a really interesting concept. Like Magic Mike, it shows the dark side of a profession that you won't know anything about unless you're in it. But unlike Magic Mike (the first one anyway), it's not depressing (which I found Magic Mike to be. Aside from the dances, the rest of the story was a bit blah - though the second one was great!). It was upbeat and interesting even in its down moments.

The film brings us a group of really unique three dimensional characters with their own personalities even though some of them aren't on screen for that much time.

The story is so compelling that, no matter how you feel about these characters and the things they do, you have to keep watching.

It does a really good job of allowing us as the audience to feel sympathy and empathy for these characters without glorifying their actions in any way. From an objective point of view we know that they definitely did deplorable things, but we can also understand why they thought that those things were their only options.

The themes of the movie really stuck out to me. When you take the basic premise of 'stripping', you don't expect the film to have such a strong focus on sisterhood, family and solidarity, which this film definitely has and pushes. These themes are why the film works as well as it does - if it wasn't an ensemble and instead solely about one woman, it would not have worked even half as well as it does.

In addition, the use of sound is something that I was really intrigued by. Because again, with a film of this backdrop, it doesn't seem like sound would be particularly important. But the way that sound is used, in both overt and covert ways, is so powerful.

And while J-Lo was great, I was surprised that more people weren't talking about Constance Wu's performance, because she was the standout performer for me, and if anyone was going to be receiving nominations (not that I think this film is necessarily Oscar worthy), it would be her.

Overall, this is such a complex, powerful story told in a really engaging way. Even if you don't think it's for you - watch it anyway!

7.5/10

Lou