The big new theatrical release this week is Hustlers. A movie that sure sounds like a cheap, seedy exploitation movie… but has been getting great reviews, especially for its co-star Jennifer Lopez. It’s a movie about strippers taking their revenge against the men who exploit them… how can that be anything but B movie junk (maybe fun B movie junk, sure)?
But there’s the rub. This is an unexpectedly, surprisingly intelligent and well-crafted movie that doesn’t feel like an exploitation flick. Constance Wu stars as a novice stripper who falls under the wing of an experience star stripper played by Jennifer Lopez. Everything is great – easy street and gravy trains all around – until 2008 happens and all their high-spending clients dry up and the stripper business falls apart like many others. The new clientele are cheaper, seedier, and probably just as responsible for the financial crisis… so the ladies take advantage of them in return.
First things first… for a movie set in a strip club, there is incidental nudity and the ladies dress sexy but in a workman-like way. The camera doesn’t exhibit the typical male gaze… and I wasn’t at all surprised to see the film was directed by a woman. To the ladies in the film, this is a job… a well-paying job that they control. They do dress skimpy and they do dance sexy, but the movie’s position is that this is just work. If you are enticed, then that’s gravy… but the camera doesn’t ogle, it doesn’t linger, it doesn’t get skeevy (or, at least, not too skeevy).
The film is directed with assurance. There’s great camera work and single shot takes, a good use of sound, and good cutting together with pop songs to fit a mood. It’s been argued this film borrows heavily from Martin Scorsese’s bag of tricks. If so, it’s a good borrow and it works in the sense that this is a film about women committing crimes and not the usual male gangsters Scorsese focuses on.
The film’s structure isn’t perfect though. Arguably it spends too much time during the good times and not enough with the crime. I’m not as harsh on the structure as all that though. I will say that it can lag at various spots but I think that’s still in pursuit of a complete story and well-rounded characters. For example, the movie spends a bit of time on a Christmas scene just showing the ladies and their immediate families spending time together as friends. I started feeling a little antsy at this part of the flick… while also acknowledging the care and attention they were putting into the actors and the performances.
Both Constance Wu and J. Lo are doing good work here. I don’t watch Constance Wu’s tv show so I largely only know her from Crazy Rich Asians… and she’s playing a completely different character here. She does a very good job making a sympathetic, relateable character (even when she’s robbing men blind). Jennifer Lopez… well…. she does a great job certainly but I don’t think she’s stretching very far as an actress. But it’s the J. Lo persona on display… well done but in her wheel-house (not as a stripper, but as a commanding, self-assured diva). It does remind me how great she was in early career with Out of Sight and Selena.
So… yeah… shockingly enough a movie about strippers out for revenge is a surprisingly intelligent and mature time at the movies. It may have some pacing issues here and there but overall it’s impressive this movie was made at all and that it was allowed to be what it is. A pretty good, pretty smart crime drama involving women.
Score: 82