Amsterdam

Amsterdam

Ten Second Review: Occasionally amusement and some good performances won’t save this tonally confused and cluttered mess.

Didn’t manage to catch a single trailer for Amsterdam. I thought I had seen one a couple months back but as I found out this evening, I had actually seen a trailer for Babylon that I had misattributed. I only realised this because that trailer played before the film and my mum and I looked at each other confused as we thought that was what we were seeing.

In short, I didn’t know what I was seeing.

Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale) is a doctor in New York who treats veterans. His best friend, Harold Woodman (John David Washington), is an attorney who also helps veterans. They met serving in the First World War where they were treated by a nurse (Margot Robbie). After they get wrapped up in an unusual death, they will have to work their way through New York high society to uncover what curiosity lays beneath…

This film really did its best to try to jam in a host of storylines that weren’t that interested in each other. There’s love stories that work and ones that don’t. Tales of deceit that work and ones that don’t. There’s also threads about drug manufacturing that all go nowhere.

The problem seems to be a writing and directorial team that want to do so much, but rather than choosing what works well together, they did as much of it has possible and it all suffered. I don’t know how many times I’ve written this, but filmmakers need to become more comfortable with either editing their ideas or moving toward the limited series format. If everything that was outlined in the first hour had been explored fully or satisfyingly in the second, then its other frailties may have been in part forgiven.

However, its problems do not merely lie with being overstuffed, they also lie in its inconsistency. I love dissonance. When different styles are played off each by an expert of the craft, it is truly something to behold. This is something rather less intentional. This is a collection of ideas picked up by a director that they wanted to showcase all at once. What it leaves you with is not the feeling of watching a master at work, but a student looking for applause. 

It has to be said that even with limited material and awful directing, the cast still put in some great performances. The three leads are fun to watch and share great chemistry. Malek, Taylor Joy and DeNiro, among a stellar supporting cast, are also a treat to watch. Again, you get the feeling a limited series might have allowed all of them time to really settle in and develop their characters.

This film is not enjoyable. It is cluttered and messy in a manner I initially hoped would be charming but wore thin quickly. It ends with a blunt message that anyone interested would have already read into it and those uninterested would be turned off by. As I was checking the character names for accuracy I noticed it had bombed at the box office and I think it might count itself lucky. It may make very little money, but at least very few people will have to seen it and then tell their friends how bad it was. It will likely fade into a Wikipedia entry of films released this year and I’m sure its incredible cast will welcome the dimming of its light.