In this R rated eye-candy romp, the women of Hustlers wears their attitude in spiky-smart stilettos with rarely a blister. Based-on-a-true-life New York Magazine article about a Bronx, single mother by day, Ramona (Jennifer Lopez)/stripper by night, she eventually strips her hefty Wall Street clientele of their riches.
It’s 2007 when the film opens on Destiny (Constance Wu) the newbie dancer from the block. After learning the ropes, literally, and the poles, the story moves into 2008 during the Wall Street crash. So just how do these fit and flirty females plan to survive post-recession? With a dose of creativity and illegal doings…that’s how. And, FYI, we’ll learn that there’s a fine line between stripping and prostitution.
Destiny (Constance Wu’s) perspective is told in flashback. It’s now 2014, and Reporter (Julia Stiles) a forgiving/non-judgmental journalist, is taking notes; managing to peel back the layers of hustling and survival for her New York Magazine article.
Hustlers tackles the women’s point of view a la Pretty Woman but minus the fairytale.
And the men? Turns out there’s a hierarchy in strip clubs. The wealthiest top dogs arrive through the back door avoiding spy cams, dropping $15G a night, while getting all possessive and aggressive, until they disappear post-financial crash, leaving a lesser breed of men to step in.
It’s been two decades since Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls or Andrew Bergman’s Striptease. But the difference is that this team of fully-realized women, mothers and friends, steal from the rich and give to themselves Robin Hood style. Ramona (Lopez) mantras justification for her illegal doing… “it’s just another deal to [men]. It’s business. This whole country is a strip club. You’ve got people tossing the money and people doing the dance.” Ramona argues that Wall Street types use other people’s money – the “fireman’s fund” – to pay for their @”&*! so why shouldn’t she cushion her account.
Yet, the irony is that while the film opens with a line by Wu expressing, “This is a story about control and doing it my way…” we can’t help but wonder…if they’re women who don’t need men and claim to high-five-acrylic-nails as ‘Miss Independent’ doesn’t the plot sends a mixed message to young women? Get your girl power on by robbing men?
The best bit is that Hustlers is written and directed by a woman: Lorene Scafaria. Her resume previously includes reflective and emotional fare like Seeking a Friend for the End of the World. In a New York Times interview, Scafaria credits Goodfellas – which mirrors her opening montage – because she feels when “it comes to depictions of men behaving badly in an underworld, we can name 1,000 of those characters…we’ve enjoyed them.”
Scafaria shot the film in an actual club in Long Island City, Queens, where they witnessed and watched several real-life strippers and dancers who also found their way onto the set and into the film.
But it’s J Lo who mesmerizes on the screen with that bikini-silk-body and her Cirque de Soleil routine as the Matriarch to the girls: Destiny (Wu), Annabelle (Lili Reinhart) and Mercedes (Keke Palmer.) Cardi B offers up some soundtrack and gets her acting debut. Probably an easy role given she was formerly a real-life stripper.
Sure strip-teasing is sexy and naughty, but there is an emotional underbelly of danger, survival and most of all hustling. In the end, the film is entertaining but one wouldn’t call it ‘good.’ We’re not sure if this a movie or all smoke and mirrors, but it gets 3 smoking tiaras for J Lo’s 50 year-old-rockin’ bod, because you can’t take your eyes off the screen. Dollar bills anyone?