Hustlers

Release Date: September 13, 2019
Runtime: 109 minutes
Rating: R
Studio: STX Films
Director: Lorene Scafaria
Cast: Constance Wu; Jennifer Lopez; Julia Stiles; Keke Palmer; Lili Reinhart; Mercedes Ruehl; Madeline Brewer; Cardi B; Lizzo

May we all bow down to the goddess that is Jennifer Lopez! JLo’s mesmerizing turn in Lorene Scafaria’s smart, sexy, and fascinating Hustlers is the role that many of us long-time fans have been waiting for.

Hustlers doesn’t hit many wrong notes. Opening with a gorgeous Paul Thomas Anderson-esque one-shot introduces us to Constance Wu’s newbie stripper, Destiny, and the flashy milieu where she scrapes out a living in mid-aughts New York City. Destiny is a single mom and sole caregiver to her grandmother and needs to earn enough money to relieve her grandmother of crippling debt. She is not unlike many of her co-workers (including Kiki Palmer’s Mercedes and Lili Reinhart’s Annabelle); just average young women working to survive. Destiny recognizes a potential mentor in star stripper Ramona (Jennifer Lopez), who clearly has figured out the secret to this whole stripping thing, and offers herself up for apprenticeship under Ramona’s tutelage. In no time at all, the money is flowing and the good times appear as though they will never end (exemplified in a fun scene featuring the singer Usher).

But end they do. When the 2008 recession hits and people need to get creative, Ramona cooks up a potentially lucrative but unquestionably heartless scheme. Her plan involves exploiting the beauty of her co-workers to identify potential marks; then dosing the guys’ cocktails with a mixture of ketamine and MDMA (Molly). Once the guys are incoherent enough to surrender their credit cards, the women will drive up the tabs with liquor and lap dances as they guys drift in and out of consciousness. Eventually, the whole house of cards comes crumbling down, as it always does, leaving probation and ruined lives in its wake.

The movie is based upon Jessica Pressler’s New York Magazine article “The Hustlers at Scores.” If you are like me and have lived in New York City for at least the past few years, you recall reading about the tales of these devious strippers in the papers. One’s initial reaction upon reading about one of these incidents was “what a schmuck that guy was;” exactly how the policemen in Hustlers initially respond. You might have thought that the duped men (and due to the nature of the narrative, almost all of the men in the movie are presented as Wall Street fraternity putzes – one of them even uses the bro-tastic catchphrase “Don’t tase me, bro!”) deserved what they got, allowing themselves to get completely blotto, then fleeced. Hustlers, however, makes a point not to cast judgment upon the men one way or another: they may have been douchebags and got what was coming to them, but the women did what they did out of desperation, albeit desperation that got out of hand. Hustlers goes to great lengths to emphasize the evolving sisterhood that is created by the women; a sense of family that, especially in the case of Destiny, is really what they have desired all along. The movie has a tendency to lay on the “we are family” vibe a little thick at times, but the camaraderie among the actresses is so good and the direction and script by Scafaria so steeped in sorority, that you don’t notice it.

All of the actresses have their moments, but Wu in particular shines. As Destiny, she is at once fiercely independent and achingly vulnerable; witness how she looks at Ramona with both admiration and adulation. Wu heartbreakingly projects Destiny’s urgency and longing for that family she never had as a child (she was abandoned by her mother and left in the care of her grandmother).

And then there is Lopez. What a performer! A true movie star. It is astonishing to watch her and marvel at they way her body moves, with such dexterity and grace. Scafaria’s camera (with the help of DP Todd Banhazl) fluidly mirrors her and delicately hugs her body as she’s dancing. Her introductory scene, set to Fiona Apple’s “Criminal” has to be seen to be believed! While I have always been a Jennifer Lopez (acting) fan, she exudes a confidence here that I haven’t seen thus far in her career. She’s a souped up Jenny From the Block and she wears this role like a favorite dress or pair of jeans, the kind you know you look good in. She has never looked more beautiful, confident, sexy, and in utter command.

The old investigative reporter framing device in films sometimes works (represented in Hustlers by Julia Stiles) and sometimes doesn’t (like James Bridge’s ridiculous aerobics masterpiece Perfect). It’s not a particularly innovative tactic, to be sure, but it gets the expository job done here in an efficient and non-distracting manner. In the hands of a less confident (and perhaps, male) director, the stripping sequences in Hustlers might have been staged as nothing more than prurient female gaze. Yet watching the film, you feel as though the camera has a certain respect for the dancers, while never denying the fact that they are essentially selling an illusion of sex for the purposes of those dollars. And this is the shrewd slight of Hustlers: it humanizes this group of women who otherwise by the nature of their profession are dehumanized on a nightly basis. It’s a neat trick and the whole enterprise pulls it off without getting busted.