‘Amsterdam’ Is a Way Bigger Disaster Than ‘Don’t Worry Darling’
Answering the question, “How many movie stars can one film squander?”, Amsterdam boasts a laundry list of illustrious actors and actresses and finds not a single productive or entertaining use for them. The first feature from David O. Russell since 2015’s Joy, this madcap period piece is part murder mystery, part anti-fascist conspiracy thriller, and all-around disaster, devoid of tone, wit, or any semblance of rhythm. It’s akin to a screwball comedy played at half-speed, its jokey barbs and grave line readings indistinguishable from each other and uniformly falling flat on their face.
Speaking of which, WWI vet Dr. Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale) has a habit of losing consciousness and plummeting to the floor courtesy of the homemade pain medications he cooks up in his office for himself and his kindred disfigured-by-combat pals. Burt has one glass eye and a nasty scar below it which he masks with a prosthetic patch, as well as a back brace that helps support his thoroughly mangled torso. The scars of war have never been more leadenly literal, although less obvious is why, as this half-Jewish, half-Catholic physician, Bale affects a speech pattern modeled after Al Pacino. No matter—with frizzy hair that makes him appear to have just risen from bed, and a hunched posture that further underscores his caricatured nature, Burt is one of the wounded but resilient good guys, and he’s thrust into a 1933 adventure when he gets a call to perform an autopsy on Bill Meekins (Ed Begley Jr.), the military commander who led his battalion.
On this mission, Burt is joined by his long-time friend Harold Woodsman (John David Washington), whom he met during the war—and stood up for against racist compatriots—and who’s now a lawyer. Together, they’re hired by Meekins’ daughter Liz (Taylor Swift) to ascertain if Meekins fell victim to foul play on his sea voyage back from Europe. This compels them to seek the assistance of pathologist Irma St. Clair (Zoe Saldaña), who tells Burt—who’s estranged from his wife Beatrice Vandenheuvel (Andrea Riseborough) due to her antisemitic parents—that true love is about choice rather than need. Such a corny maxim sticks out like a sore thumb, as do the many other love-related platitudes that pepper Russell’s script, which strives to pick up steam with an unexpected murder that puts Burt and Harold in the crosshairs of assassins and their shadowy employers, and forces them to reach out to New York City’s rich and powerful.