If “Ocean’s 8” and “Showgirls” had a baby, this would be it.
“Hustlers,” the long-awaited and star-studded crime flick dominating the box office, is set to become a girls’ night staple — and for good reason.
J. Lo’s most recent project is a film following a group of strippers in New York City. At the beginning, the girls were successful, making enough money to get by and support their families by targeting wealthier clientele.
Everything changed in 2008 when recession hit. The dancers’ clients had less to spend, and the women had to work harder for every dime. The cut-in customers and the club owner taking a hefty share of profits left the performers desperate for money. Ramona (Jennifer Lopez) develops a plan.
Ramona, as well as her protégés Dorothy (Constance Wu), Mercedes (Keke Palmer) and Annabelle (Lili Reinhart) decide to target the same clients they did before, this time with even more vitriol.
The group begins to carefully drug its wealthier, Wall-Street clients, fueled by desperation and anger towards the men that helped take down the economy. First, they give the men MDMA to loosen them up and make them more-easily influenced. Next, a pinch of ketamine for memory loss and a side of unconsciousness.
The women would then max out the men’s credit cards under the assumption that the men would be too embarrassed to report this to anyone. After all, most of them were cheating on their wives. This left all the power in the hands of the women, something most of them were never allowed in their day-to-day lives.
This crazy tale is actually based on a real story written by Jessica Pressler for The Cut in an article titled “The Hustlers at Scores.” It’s mostly accurate and shows a lot of the struggles and power dynamics within the stripping industry.
It’s easy to point fingers and villainize either set of characters in this movie, but because its a true story, it’s so much more complex than that. The viewers don’t know the stories of the victims. It’s assumed they’re horrible people that disrespect women and steal profits for themselves. They’re the kings, and the girls are Robin Hood.
But in the same way, the men are still victims. They were drugged and robbed. That obviously crosses a few moral lines, and throughout the movie the vigilante justice twist begins to fade. The film itself does a great job of treading that line, showing the raw chaos of the mission.
For the most part, the movie was well-constructed and well-written, but it wasn’t anything mind-blowing. It’s a good story that blows shallow girl-power plots out of the water, but it lacks the character development and true friendships that would make it soar.
With that being said, there probably wouldn’t be enough time to fully delve into that and keep the movie under three hours. They tried their best, but there are certain cuts that are necessary to make in order to keep something in the box office.
Another cut that was of little consequence to the actual quality of the movie, but of large consequence to personal fulfillment, was the startling lack of both Lizzo and Cardi B. Both musicians only have cameos at the beginning of the movie, despite trailers and advertisements portraying them as main characters.
Despite this (personal) disappointment, “Hustlers” was still a great movie with more depth and truth than the typical men-scamming plot. It hit the issues it needed to hit, but with more screen time it could have truly knocked it out of the park.