So bad, I could only stand twenty minutes of this poorly cast, poorly directed movie. Why cast Bale (a young fit man) as a paunchy barely average con man? Amy Adams's girl next store beauty is totally wrong for the role of a stripper /con girl who rides the coattails of a loser. And Bradley Cooper looks like a Mediterranean pool boy with a fake tan and curly hair. The direction is poor, with dialogue erratically paced and the interaction of characters looking more like a stumble than a dance. Don't waste your time on this.

A perfidious President performs all the depraved acts he accuses others of playing and lying about both his and others?AH is a spurious beacon lighting methods of confidence men/women. It reminded me of House of Games where the misdirection and subterfuge lull the viewer into complacency to accept and trust 'honest' characters(on no evidence) while the obverse is gyring away. Think Penn and Teller with a smirk not a twinkle. AH causes me to examine the current political intrigue: are we witnessing assassination of the Republic, the consummation of the Russian promise to bury us? or a heist movie? All 3! American Hustle delineates a lie based on corrupt practices, all with very human faces, and is superb. Also, it should have won the Oscar for costumes- nailed the 70's clothing hiding the intrinsic ethos of the '70's in plain sight.

I love everybody in this movie and yet the movie sucked don't know what else to say

By the way this movie was hyped, from its stellar cast of Bradley Cooper to Jennifer Lawrence and Robert DeNiro, to its numerous Academy Award nominations, I was expecting an entertainingly exceptional motion picture! Quite frankly, to say it was just average is an understatement.This 2013 black-comedy from David O. Russell is the story of two con-artists, Christian Bale and Amy Adams, who are forced by FBI agent Bradley Cooper to set up a sting to snare corrupt politicians ~ including the mayor of Camden, New Jersey, Jeremy Renner.The movie isn't at all captivating nor the plot nuanced with ANY twists or turns. I'd say the only good thing I found with this movie were the great songs interspersed throughout it. How one critic called the film "the sharpest most exhilarating movie in years", and another "riotously funny", just proves to me how IMDb reviewers are much more credible in their assessments of movies than those who do this for a paycheck.Gave 5* out of 10, mainly for the music...and empathy that Cooper had to endure those daily hair rollers!