An entertaining fast paced and well acted film with awesome music from the '70's. One of the best of the year? No. Clever? No.
The story was a fictionalized and dramatized and maximised re-telling of the Abscom sting operation in which congressmen and other politicians were caught on video and audio accepting bribes.
The movie features some excellent performances; Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Lewis C.K., and especially Jeremy Renner. Bradley Cooper playing the FBI agent who willingly cut corners and went against dept. policy to be the big shot who brought all the 'fixers' down was way over the top for me. I know all the parts were exaggerated caricatures and no one except maybe for Renner who was the mayor of New Jersey was believable as someone you'd meet in your ordinary life, but Bradley Cooper was even beyond that. In fact some of his scenes resembled his mentally out of balance acting in Silver Linings Playbook.
The final twist was anti-climactic and in fact, Bill needed to explain it to me even though i understood (or thought i did) all the scams and deals and con's that peppered the film before that.
We rated it a 7.5.
I was thinking that the 70s style would far outweigh any substance in this film. Now I don't have much desire to see it . . . maybe at the cheap theaters.
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