Director David O. Russell returns from an extended absence (after the oddflop Joy) with an extended...well, it’s hard to say what, exactly. A spoof on the hard-boiled works of Humphrey Bogart? That would explain the Maltese Falcon voiceover, the Big Sleep meetup with the rich family trying to control its wild daughter, and of course, the strange Casablanca triangle of dear friends overseas, two white (Christian Bale, Margot Robbie) and one black (John David Washington). Bale works pretty well as an anti-Bogey: a half-Catholic, half-Jewish doctor with a glass eye, a back brace, and a pain pill problem thanks to the Great War who is nevertheless unembittered and a regular champion of kindness and decency. He’ll stick his neck out for anybody, if he can manage to stand up. And a spoof would explain the weirdly weightless character of the drama, which ought to feel more dramatic, given the film’s urgent warning against anti-democratic forces at work right here in the good old USA, even as it bares its teeth at American businessmen who are willing to profit off fascism. Those who refuse to learn from history, etc. And it would explain the almost embarrassing sincerity of sentiment and nigh-inhuman displays of virtue. (“Whoever is shooting at me right now is a coward!”) But a spoof could never be this indulgent of its whimsy, this sloppy about its story, this careless with its characters. Pity, that (2022) — Matthew Lickona
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