Mark Reviews Movies: HUSTLERS

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 12, 2019

On the surface, Hustlers seems like a flashy, sexy, and empowering story about a group of strippers who rob the carelessly rich of Wall Street blind. Writer/director Lorene Scafaria tells this part of the story, for sure, but the filmmaker isn't simply content in giving us the surface level of this reality-inspired tale of crime. Scafaria cares enough about the two main characters to both sympathize with and criticize them. They have their reasons, yes, and perfectly rational, understandable ones, too. That doesn't make them exempt from judgment, even when their targets seem as if they deserve the punishment.

The story of a series of confidence tricks, based on Jessica Pressler's 2015 New York magazine article, comes later in the film. That delay is vital, because this isn't really the story of a crime spree or even a politically charged assault on the wealthy, who helped to collapse the entire financial system by 2008, by the struggling.

It's actually about the struggling—about a woman who becomes an exotic dancer to help the grandmother who raised her and to ensure that she can live a life on her own, independent of anyone else's support. This, of course, is that fabled American Dream—to do better than the generations that came before and to be, in every available way, one's own person. Here, it doesn't take much for that to be warped into something that could destroy other people in the process.

The dancer is Destiny (Constance Wu), a rather loaded stage name for the woman whose grandmother (Wai Ching Ho) calls her Dorothy. At the start, she's the "new girl" at a popular strip club in New York City, populated by Wall Street employees of various tiers, looking to spend whatever money they've earned or to put a minor scratch in their exorbitant salary, and by the occasional celebrity. A chunk of Destiny's earnings go back to the club. It's barely worth the cost of the ride from outside the city.

Things start looking up when Destiny asks for help from Ramona (Jennifer Lopez), the club's star dancer who can get piles of cash on the stage without removing a single item of clothing. Ramona teaches the newcomer about the particulars of the clientele and gets her into the room with the club's most exclusive visitors, who come through a back door and directly into a private space.

The money starts flowing. Destiny gets a place in the city and goes on shopping trips with Ramona, who wants to start a fashion line, while grandma gets a stack of bills whenever she needs it. The teacher and the student form a tight bond, which is almost indistinguishable from that between a mother and a daughter.

Then, it's 2008, and the economy collapses. The Wall Street guys stop coming to the club, either because they've been laid off or don't want to waste the money. Destiny moves in with a boyfriend, becomes pregnant, and, without any other option, accepts the support of someone else. Ramona tries a job a clothing store, but the daytime hours don't work with her own daughter's school schedule. Inevitably, the two women end up back at the club, and Ramona has come up with a clever, if obviously illegal, plan to make more money from the Wall Street guys who stole so much from the country.

In the time it takes for Scafaria's screenplay to arrive at the central plot, the film does a lot of heavy lifting—examining the day-to-day life of these dancers, setting up the class dynamic that will drive the crimes, establishing the two main characters and their personal responsibilities and motives (There are others, played by Keke Palmer and Lili Reinhart, involved in the plot), cementing the relationship between Destiny and Ramona (admirably, without ever vocalizing the latter's role as a surrogate-mother figure for the former). Considering how relatively laid back this lengthy prologue to the meat of the story is, Scafaria develops a real sense of momentum.

It helps considerably that Wu, as the stubborn but admirably self-reliant Destiny, and Lopez are as good as they are here. Lopez really stands out in the way she makes every moment, from teaching Destiny maneuvers on a pole to conversations about the troubled past and the hopeful future, into tender displays of almost maternal love.

We come to understand these women. We come to understand this world. We already understand the impact of the economic collapse, and we certainly feel a bit torn when Ramona reveals her plan: to seduce Wall Street workers, drug them, and then rack up credit card charges at the club.

It's wrong, obviously, on a legal and moral level, but Ramona, in addition to being big-hearted, makes a good sales pitch. There's a framing device, featuring Destiny being interviewed by a journalist (played by Julia Stiles, as a stand-in for Pressler) years later, that feels like just that—a simple framing device. That is until the reporter becomes a means of putting things into the proper perspective, with a single, passionless interruption of the story: "Let's get back to the drugging."

The major success of this film, beyond its sharp focus on characters and relationships, is a matter of tone and purpose. It doesn't glamorize the characters' actions, but it's also not a meager morality play, in which the wrongdoers get their just comeuppance. With Hustlers, Scafaria purposely juxtaposes the corruption of Wall Street with the eventual corruption of the main characters' desire to live a good, comfortable life. Call it whatever you want: greed, human nature, the American Dream, or something else. It makes thieves of us all.

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