Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic “A lot of this really happened,” teases the opening card of David O. Russell’s unruly ensemble comedy “Amsterdam,” a loony early-’30s social satire that goes cartwheeling through a little-remembered episode in American history when fascists tried to overthrow the U.S.
government. Russell clearly sees parallels between this alarming chapter of the nation’s past and our present, as national divisions threaten to overwhelm American democracy, but the writer-director has complicated the plot — the movie’s plot, that is, not the greater conspiracy on which it turns — to such a degree that audiences are bound to be bewildered.
Instead of wondering which parts are true and which ones invented, they’re likely to find themselves asking, “What the hell is happening?” for the better part of 134 minutes.
A certain amount of confusion is neither unusual nor unwelcome in comedic capers and whodunits, where the fun so often stems from being bounced around by surprising developments (what happens to Taylor Swift in this film qualifies as such a twist).
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