HUSTLERS
Directed by: Lorene Scafaria
Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes
Release date: September 13, 2019
Genre: Drama, Crime, Comedy, and Adaptation
Distribution: STX films
MPAA Rating: R

Based on New York magazine's 2015 article "The Hustlers at Scores" by Jessica Pressler, comes an adaptation directed and written by Lorene Scafaria about a crew of savvy former strip club employees who band together to the tables on their Wall Street clients just prior to the 2008 U.S. economic crash that hit Wall Street hard.

This film can be considered an ensemble character production, but the Hustlers actually follows Destiny (Constance Wu, Rich Crazy Asians), who embraces her role as a young sensitive  and vulnerable single mom woman struggling to make ends meet.  She takes on a job as a stripper at a local New York City Strip Club.  She enjoys the money from stripping, but is it more for the camaraderie than she is for the cash.  Destiny's mother abandoned her when she was very young, so she has trust issues and hasn't let a lot of people in.  The lack of meaningful relationships with women in her family life makes her longing for female friendship so much greater.  This leads to her immediate friendship with dancer colleague Ramona (Jennifer Lopez).

Ramona, the club's top money earner, who's always in control, has the clientele figured out, and really knows her way around the pole.  Yet, Ramona is endearing, complicated, and damaged, and her ambition threatens to cloud her sense of morality and connection to Destiny and the rest of the women dancers.  Jennifer Lopez captures this image o screen as a slippery slope and seduces people to her own agenda.  She is known as the mama bear who is always reaching for more than who she really is.

Annabelle (Lili Reinhart) takes on a character that is a combination of innocence and allure.  Innocently provocative and a little clueless on life.  She is in a especially vulnerable place living without her family, which has rejected her because of her profession, and trying to get by the best way she can.  She responds to Ramona's motherly care and immediately bonds with her. 

Mercedes (Keke Palmer is fearless and always says what's on her mind, but is also cool and put-together, even when trying to make ends meet.  She has a sense of humor about almost everything.  She thinks of Ramona, Destiny, and Annabelle as her sisters.

Liz (Lizzo) is the strong sassy ebullient stripper.  She is confident and a gifted performer who struts into the spotlight.  She also is a woman who speaks her mind, censors nothing, and delivers an enviable level of honesty and pure passion.

Diamond (Cardi B)  is a tough woman from the Bronx who has worked at the strip club for a year.  She is a little more hardcore and acerbic than the other dancers and she doesn't take heart from anyone - but thanks to Ramona, she eventually connects with Destiny and joins the ladies in celebrating their new bonds.

While setting up the character development of these women, the film gives the atmospheric tone of the seedy and gritty life in this profession.  The sequences are of a lot of 'shake your booty' scenes as sleezy men admire.  The meat of this film emerges when a reporter, Elizabeth (Julia Stiles), chronicles the story of these women through interviews with Destiny and Ramona.  It is a story of how these women concoct a plan to drug, manipulate, and extract the wealthy Wall Street clientele's funds via credit cards. 

However, this film should have been constructed better.  The emphasis should have given more to the actual scams and personal temperaments of the women, opposed to the three quarters of running time of a 'shake you booty movie' imagery.  The montages are weak, and the controversial performances lack realism.  This is a film that has a lot do with nothing relevant.  I felt little and no engagement to any of the characters or scenes - none for theft by the strippers and none for the idiot wealthy male victims.  What a waste of cinematic time.

FILM RATING (C)
Gerald Wright