Explore More

The greatest hustle that “Hustlers” ever pulled was making you think gloriously foulmouthed rap sensation Cardi B was going to be a legitimate part of the movie. She’s not, much to the detriment of this middling female-empowerment heist.

The only cast member (as far as I know) who can actually claim firsthand knowledge of the biz, Cardi’s relegated to a few early scenes and then shuffled offstage for the remainder of its running time. But boy, does she own the screen when she’s on, exuding some early-career Rosie Perez dialogue energy and a knowing smirk as she critiques the lap dancing technique of newbie dancer Destiny (Constance Wu).

I dared to be optimistic about this Toronto Film Fest premiere from director/screenwriter Lorene Scafaria (one of the 36% of women who represent directors, co-directors or creators of films at this year’s fest). She certainly assembled a promising cast, from Cardi (sort of) to Jennifer Lopez, Wu, Lizzo, Keke Palmer and Lili Reinhart – with ’80s stalwart Mercedes Ruehl as the strip club “mom,” no less, and ’90s sweetheart Julia Stiles as a journalist covering the scam at the heart of the film.

Hollywood is long overdue for a movie that stomps back, in a 5-inch lucite heel, at the endless scenes of writhing strippers being used for cheapo filler in testosterone-fueled movies for approximately forever.

But instead of being “Ocean’s 8” with a kicky subversion of exotic-dancing club power, it runs out of steam early on (not to belabor the point, but it’s pretty soon after Cardi takes off) and contents itself with running through the same scenario ad nauseam.

As top marquee dancer Ramona, J.Lo is initially a total thrill to watch, whether on stage showing off gravity-defying athletics on the pole under a hail of Benjamins or enjoying a lusty post-dance smoke on the rooftop afterward, mink coat puddled around her. She takes the timid Destiny under her wing, first teaching her how to move to elicit the biggest tips (and to stay away from the alcohol) and eventually moving on to a scheme to roofie targeted bigwigs, empty their credit cards and assume, correctly, they’ll be too embarrassed to report the crime to anyone afterward.

She periodically narrates the film, a la “The Big Short,” outlining how, when and why they’re pulling this off: They can’t dance forever, and in the fallout from the recession, none of their snaky clients ever went to jail for their financial depravities. In short, she says, “f–k these guys.”

“Hustlers” is based on a 2015 New York magazine article titled “The Hustlers at Scores,” and it turns on an alluring theory of Ramona’s: “This whole country is a strip club. You got people tossing the money and people doing the dance.” It stands to reason that the people scraping the dollar bills off the floor in scratchy thongs might eventually balk at their perma-subservient status. But Scafaria, and her leading ladies, fail to flesh out characters engaging enough to make us root for them. Not that we’re rooting for the sweaty Wall Street creepers who get fleeced.

There is nobody to root for here, an issue that leads to checking one’s watch midway through the show. Like Cardi’s character, Diamond, says, “Drain the clock, not the c–k.” You get the feeling “Hustlers” is vamping by the seventh time we watch a beady-eyed banker slurringly pull his wallet out of his Brooks Brothers khakis.

The fault lies in no small measure with Wu, who’s had some offscreen p.r. Issues of her own lately. They pertained to her desire to move from the small screen (“Fresh Off the Boat”) into, presumably, starring film roles.

She may have cut it as nice-gal professor Rachel in “Crazy Rich Asians,” but she never really breaks free of her initial image as the boring one at the strip club, and she’s supposed to be our conflicted moral center of the film — dedicated to caring for her ailing grandma, but also eager to get ahead. J.Lo, on the contrary, is a natural and a camera magnet, and when Ramona is seducing or scheming, the film’s got your attention.

Woe to Lizzo, everyone’s new favorite singer, shunted off mostly into the background. Keke Palmer fares slightly better but still ends up blending into an indistinguishable pack of predatory gold-diggers who mostly end up spending their illicit funds on things like handbags and cars – not a great role model for the supposedly subversive redistribution of wealth.

Perhaps it was a bad sign that the cast of “Hustlers” was paraded out before the film and not invited back onstage afterward for a Q&A — rather, they took bows from a balcony where they were all seated together, looking spectacular, of course. There’s a lot to be said, this year, about giving space to majority-female casts, and more female directors, and to the undoing of the strip-club cliche in film. I just wish the first real salvo had hit its mark with a little more zing.

ncG1vNJzZmimqaW8tMCNnKamZ2Jlfnp7j3JmaXBfncK0wMueqaxloprDqrHWZqqtqpmlvaa%2BjJ%2BjopubYrOitcusZK2nXZa%2FsMHSnmSipqSav6a%2F02g%3D