Movie Review: Don't Let The Box Office Fool You, 'Amsterdam' is Pretty Good

Amsterdam (2022)

Directed by David O. Russell

Written by David O. Russell

Starring Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Robert De Niro, Rami Malek

Release Date October 7th, 2022

Published October 11th, 2022

I'm late to the party on the new David O. Russell film Amsterdam. I didn't get an early preview of the movie and that gave me time to soak in some of what other critics have said. That also means I can look at the current discourse around the film, following its opening weekend at the box office, and offer a fair parsing of the movie. Headlines in the online sphere hail Amsterdam as a bomb and a box office debacle and some appear to be calling for the head of David O. Russell for daring to lose money for a Hollywood studio.

Yes, Amsterdam is projected to lose around $100 million dollars once the box office dust settles. This means nothing more than the marketing campaign for the film was a flop and doesn't reflect anything about the movie itself. I think Amsterdam has some significant flaws but it is a well accomplished movie, perfectly on brand for David O. Russell and featuring several big stars delivering terrific performances amid a very clever, very funny, and wildly absurd true story.

Why is it that the movie as a whole takes the blame when the marketing fails? Let's be clear, the marketing of Amsterdam was a failure. The marketing failed to capture the best and most widely appealing aspects of the movie. For instance, the marketing fails completely at taking advantage of the romance between John David Washington and Margot Robbie and that is arguably the best element of Amsterdam, certainly its the most relatable and tangible element of this quirky tonally awkward absurdist comedy.

Another reasonable question that is not being asked is why a studio spent so much on a story that was going to be a hard sell no matter how many movie stars are in the cast. Amsterdam is a film that succeeds or fails based on your taste for absurdly wordy dialogue, quirky characters, and other unconventional forms of satire. The studio behind Amsterdam have no excuses to hide behind, they could not have approved this script and this director without seeing the tough sell they had on their hands.

For me, Amsterdam is a tough sell that I was sold on while experiencing it. I had little idea what I was getting myself into when I saw it, because the marketing campaign does little to prepare you for the movie, and I was won over in the end by the odd yet earnest and passionate film that David O. Russell and his team put together. The film is often mystifying and occasionally frustratingly obtuse but it works thanks to this incredible cast and a story so wild you will have a hard time believing it is true.

Fans of The Dollop Podcast might recognize the story being told in Amsterdam. General Smedley Butler is a little remembered American hero. General Butler was a bit of an oddball but he proved himself as a leader on the bloody battlefields of World War 1. He, in fact, fought in five wars for his country over the years prior to World War 2. In the 1920s he became a hero of his fellow veterans when he supported the so-called Bonus Army, soldiers who simply asked the government for the money they were promised to go and fight World War 1.

Butler's passionate defense of veterans made him a leader who could command his own army of former soldiers if he chose to do so. This was the opening that many in the business community, high-end CEO's slowly carving up early 20th century America among themselves. They targeted Butler as a man who could displace President Roosevelt whose New Deal politics were taking money from the pockets of the wealthy to bring the poor out of poverty.

These wealthy men preferred the approach Germany and Italy were taking wherein power was being concentrated at the top and dictators gave favorable deals to those they felt were worthy. Smedley Butler was the man that these titans American business chose for their puppet dictator of the United States and it is genuinely terrifying just how close to a fascist dictatorship America came. Had it not been for the integrity of General Smedley Butler our country could have been changed forever in the worst possible ways.

Amsterdam is not exactly about what came to be known as "The Business Plot." Rather, Russell approaches the true life story through the fictional and comic lens of these three oddballs who met and became life long friends in Amsterdam, in the wake of World War 1. Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale) is a doctor who was urged to join the army and fight in World War 1 by his rich in-laws who felt that a war hero would befit the ideal of the family in the public imagination. Harold (John David Washington) is a lawyer who was conscripted into the military and fought to be treated as equals with white soldiers.

Burt and Henry are brought together by General Meeker (Ed Begley Jr.) who places Burt in charge the mostly black regimen where Harold is sequestered. Together, they make a pact to watch each other's back. If Burt proves to be a leader who takes care of his black soldiers, Henry will assure Burt that those same soldiers won't shoot him in the back. Burt accepts this as a fair trade and they go to war where they are severely injured. In Paris, the two are treated by Valerie, a volunteer medical worker on the run from her past.

When the war ends, the three head off to Amsterdam to live the lives of hedonists and friends. In Amsterdam, Burt and Henry are introduced to a pair of secretive men whose work stands firmly between stopping the spread of fascism and the somewhat shady tactics of spy services. Mike Myers and Michael Shannon play a pair of bird obsessed secret agents who use bird watching as a cover for what we presume is spy activity. Myers and Shannon's characters protect our trio of friends in Amsterdam in exchange for an unspecified favor in the future.

After 6 months of partying in Amsterdam and recovering from their wounds, Burt, who was badly scarred and lost an eye in the war, decides to return to America. With his newfound knowledge of European medicine and types of treatments, Burt hopes to help treat soldiers struggling to fit back into society after the war. Henry wishes to stay in Amsterdam with Valerie, the two clearly fall in love at first sight, but she soon vanishes. Broken-hearted, Henry returns to New York to work along side Burt.

When the duo are hired to investigate the murder of their former General, General Meeker, the conspiracy plot begins to unfold. Robert De Niro stands at the center of the plot as a General caught between doing the right thing and the wealthy men who hope to use him as their puppet dictator. With the veterans who trust and follow him, De Niro's General has a standing army ready to fight with him and he must decide if he's for sale to sell out his country or if the truth, stopping the poisonous spread of fascism, and his integrity is more important.

Realistically, yes, Robert De Niro has by far the most interesting character in Amsterdam. The characters portrayed by Christian Bale, John David Washington and Margot Robbie are all fine but it is De Niro as the General who stands out. The General recognizes what the underdogs are up against and his place within that conflict. And that is a complicated and lengthy description of a complicated plot. Do you now have a better sense of the marketing challenge of Amsterdam? Exactly how do you reduce this idea to 30 second commercials? I feel it can be done but the marketing team behind Amsterdam appears to have given up far too quickly.

Amsterdam is quite a good movie in many respects. The clockwork plot developments are elevated by the light comic tone in the performances of our three leads. With each obstacle they face, they have a delightful time finding themselves out of trouble or scrutiny. There really isn't an obvious villain, aside from a henchman played by an unrecognizable Timothy Olyphant, and this can make the stakes seem nebulous as we wait for the big plot reveal which arrives a little after the halfway point of the movie.

Amsterdam is undeniably overlong and a trained viewer can see where the edits in the movie should come. That said, an artist can see why these seemingly superfluous scenes were left in the movie. The scenes that could use a trim in Amsterdam often involve the cast engaging in some very fun schtick. It's not hard to imagine this cast cracking each other up and ruining take after take after take to the point where the scene stayed in simply because the cast was having so much fun and that fun comes through the screen.

The chemistry between Bale, Robbie and Washington is strong even as their invented characters lack the weight of De Niro's General who is based on the real life Smedley Butler but is under a different name in the movie. I really enjoyed the energetic friendly bond between the three main protagonists and their chemistry is why the movie succeeds as much as it does, despite pulling focus from the larger plot to stop fascism in America.

Robert De Niro acting as a paragon of American virtue, in the end, makes a good deal of sense. If you want a character to embody the idea of standing up to fascism, De Niro's stoic, wizened, and impermeable presence is a great choice. He looks as if he would not merely stand against fascists, he would willingly punch them in the face if need be and despite his advanced age.

Amsterdam is flawed but very watchable. The cast is superb, the odd tone fits with the absurdly real story, and David O. Russell manages to corral it all into a movie he clearly enjoyed making. It needs some tweaks, a slightly tighter edit, and a little more rounding out of the romantic story between John David Washington and Margot Robbie, but those are relatively minor complaints against aspects of Amsterdam. By the end, the final act of the movie, I was really hooked by Amsterdam and because of that I recommend getting past all of the flop talk and actually seeing the movie for yourself.

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