The Hustlers of Wall Street

As some of you may know, I’m a bit of a sucker for “based on a true story” movies in which fact can be more interesting – if not stranger – than fiction.  Of course, such movies are only purported to be based on actual events, often exaggerating or otherwise sensationalizing characters and situations for the moviegoing audience.  ‘Hustlers,’ the real-life story of how a group of New York City strip club dancers hustled the wolves of Wall Street in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, isn’t guilty of such over-exaggeration, but unfortunately that also proved to be its greatest weakness.

 

Told through a series of extended flashbacks during an interview of former stripper Dorothy aka “Destiny” (Constance Wu) by investigative reporter Elizabeth (Julia Stiles), we learn that her inadvertent descent into criminal activity began when she befriended popular and experienced dancer Ramona (JLO), who not only taught the wet‑behind‑the‑ears Destiny the three essential “hooks” of pole-dancing but also took her under her wing and became a motherly mentor to her.  Due to the great recession resulting from the aforementioned crash of the real estate market, the girls find their preferred clientele shrinking and their own lifestyles crimped.  So what is a poor hard‑working girl to do?  They concoct a scheme to “date rob” (as opposed to “date rape,” get it?) rich men maxing out their credit cards by incapacitating them with a potent mixture of MDMA and ketamine, all the while telling themselves that there’s a certain poetic justice in preying upon the wolves of Wall Street who steal from poor hard-working folks.  A girl’s gotta make a living with a clear conscience, after all.

 

Predictably, their elaborate scheme eventually collapsed like a house of cards and the date-robbing ring ran afoul of the law. Far from being a cautionary tale, however, ‘Hustlers’ seems to say that sometimes crime does pay.  Destiny and ring-leader Ramona ended up getting slap-on-the-wrist sentences with little or no jail time and put on probation.  What they did was wrong but it wasn’t exactly murder either.  Ho-hum.  That pretty much sums up ‘Hustlers’ for me. The characters aren’t all that engaging and the screenplay lacked the wit, cynicism and biting humor of other inspired-by-true-story movies such as ‘American Hustle,’ ‘The Big Short’ or ‘Pain & Gain,’ never mind ‘The Wolf of Wall Street.’  In the final analysis, this story of strippers-gone-bad just isn’t interesting or scandalous enough to write home about.

Grade: C