Not your usual heist movie
Film OF THE WEEK: HUSTLERS ★★★★★★★★✩✩ (15, 110 mins) comedy/drama/thriller. Constance Wu, Jennifer Lopez, Cardi B, Keke Palmer, Lili Reinhart, Lizzo, Julia Stiles, Mercedes Ruehl, Trace Lysette. Director: Lorene Scafaria.
Depending on how much of the promotional material you may have seen, Hustlers could be a very different beast from the film you were
expecting.
Anyone who had watched the trailer could be forgiven for thinking it is a just another heist movie or run-of-the-mill comedy.
While Hustlers certainly has those elements, at its core it is a story about female friendships, and what is permissible for women to do to get ahead in a man’s world.
it is far more a drama than comedy and one particularly moving scene towards the end could have you reaching for a tissue.
Loosely based on a true story, Hustlers follows a group of new York City strippers who resort to ripping off their clients after falling on hard times in the wake of the 2008 financial crash.
The film has a star-studded cast, with Crazy Rich Asians actress Constance Wu playing struggling single mother Doro
thy, who strips under the name Destiny.
Jennifer Lopez steals the show as veteran dancer Ramona Vega, who takes Destiny under her wing and eventually lures her into a life of crime.
Former child star Keke Palmer and Riverdale’s Lili Reinhart take supporting roles while Cardi B’s much-publicised involvement is in fact an all-too-brief cameo, though a typically colourful one.
Similarly, pop star Lizzo is a fleeting but memorable presence.
Hustlers’ central narrative focuses on the relationship between Lopez, 50, and Wu, 37.
Lopez, playing a maternal figure, showcases the many strings to her bow. She is equally at home showing off her impressively toned body while dancing on a pole as she is having a heart-toheart with the young women who look up to her.
Wu also puts in a strong performance, convincing as the hard-up mother prepared to go to extreme lengths to provide for her daughter.
The story is told through flashback,
with Julia Stiles - perhaps best known for her role in 1999 teen romance 10 Things I Hate About You - starring as a journalist interviewing Wu about her past as a hustler.
Lorene Scafaria, who wrote the script and directed the film, begins by framing the strippers as Robin Hood-type characters, robbing the undeservedly rich bankers of Wall Street.
However, viewers are forced to question the morality of Lopez and co when they start ripping off men who may not be so one-dimensional.
Wu’s character suffers a crisis of conscience when the gang empty the bank account of a kind-hearted architect.
Having said that, the viewer is left with the feeling that, while these are women doing bad things, they’re not necessarily bad women.
VERDICT
All in all, Hustlers’ strong script combined with the memorable performances of Wu and Lopez make for a film well worth watching. IT CHAPTER TWO
(15, 165 mins)
In an early scene of director Andy Muschietti’s over-long return to the highest-grossing horror film of all time, an emotionally crippled character - a novelist turned screenwriter - becomes the butt of a running joke about his inability to write a satisfying ending.
Stephen King, who cameos in the sequel as the proprietor of a musty antiques store, weathered similar criticism for the resolution to his 1986 book, It.
Screenwriter Gary Dauberman doesn’t stray far from the well-trodden path of the source text and condemns It Chapter Two to a fantastical final flourish that will come as a relief to audiences who have slogged through more than two and a half hours of on-screen calamity.
The opening sequence - a brutal and unflinching hate crime - is the stuff of modern-day nightmares and sends a shudder of fear down the spine that ripples deliciously as grown-up incarnations of the characters are drawn back to the fictional town of Derry in Maine.
Sins of the past echo cruelly in the present for one victim of domestic violence and a diabolical predator preys on a little girl’s insecurities about her looks with scalpel-like precision.
Once the reluctant heroes divide to conquer their fears, tension dissipates and the running time becomes a genuine test of endurance despite sterling performances from a teary-eyed Jessica Chastain and James Mcavoy.
It has been 27 years since the sweltering summer of 1989 when teenage members of the Losers Club - Ben Hanscom (Jeremy Ray Taylor), Beverly Marsh (Sophia Lillis), Bill Denbrough (Jaeden Lieberher), Eddie Kaspbrak (Jack Dylan Grazer), Mike Hanlon (Chosen Jacobs), Richie Tozier (Finn Wolfhard) and Stanley Uris (Wyatt Oleff) - banded together to defeat Pennywise the clown (Bill Skarsgard).
“If it isn’t dead, if it comes back, we come back too,” declares Bill to the rest of the gang, slicing a shard of broken glass into each of their palms to seal a blood oath.
Hellish history repeats in 2016 and Mike (now played by Isaiah Mustafa), who has remained in Derry as the town’s librarian, summons other members of the Losers Club to revisit their darkest nightmare.
Ben (Jay Ryan), Beverly (Chastain), Bill (Mcavoy), Eddie (James Ransone), Richie (Bill Hader) and Stanley (Andy Bean) take his call, their memories of the past wiped in the intervening years.
It doesn’t take long for Pennywise to draw succour from the group’s mounting dread.
Punctuated by myriad flashbacks, It Chapter Two could comfortably excise 30 minutes of dramatic fat to quicken the pace of a sluggish second act.
The shock value of the sequel’s nervejangling centrepiece - Beverly’s visit to her childhood home - is dulled by its prominent inclusion in a teaser trailer.
Skarsgard’s rictus grin still unsettles and there is no denying the queasy relevance of King’s narrative, which warns against mob mentality in a society riven by scare-mongering and intolerance.