The first trailer for David O. Russell’s… | Little White Lies

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The first trail­er for David O. Russell’s Ams­ter­dam catch­es stars in a nation­al mystery

06 Jul 2022

Words by Charles Bramesco

Three people, two men and one woman, wearing formal business attire, walking down a hallway with ornate wood panelling.
Three people, two men and one woman, wearing formal business attire, walking down a hallway with ornate wood panelling.
Mar­got Rob­bie, John David Wash­ing­ton, and Chris­t­ian Bale lead as a trio of friends caught in a mur­der case.

After a sev­en-year hia­tus, David O. Rus­sell — direc­tor of such recent works as Amer­i­can Hus­tle, Sil­ver Lin­ings Play­book, Joy, and Ken­tucky Fried Chicken’s I Ate The Bones!” ad cam­paign — has returned with a new fea­ture wrapped in mys­tery. Which makes sense, see­ing as the film is itself a mys­tery by genre, though up until now we in the gen­er­al pub­lic haven’t even known just how much we don’t know.

But the first trail­er for Ams­ter­dam, released online just this morn­ing, allows us a few clues to get a sense of the ques­tions we should be ask­ing. It’s the inter­war 30s in Amer­i­ca, there has been a mur­der, and some­one knows too much. But who’s the cul­prit, and what did they see? The game is afoot.

The clip below intro­duces us to a trio of friends — or per­haps more, judg­ing by the shot of them inti­mate­ly tan­gled up in one another’s embrace — bound togeth­er by their expe­ri­ences in WWI: a pair of sol­diers (John David Wash­ing­ton and Chris­t­ian Bale) and a bat­tle­field nurse (Mar­got Rob­bie). They all land in the crosshairs of sus­pi­cion when a dis­tin­guished old­er gen­tle­man winds up dead, dis­cov­ered in the trail­er by an incred­u­lous Chris Rock, launch­ing an adven­ture with impli­ca­tions of nation­al concern.

After receiv­ing a warn­ing from Rami Malek and Anya Tay­lor-Joy, the tri­umvi­rate goes to seek the help of Robert De Niro and winds up at a tony the­atre with Mike Myers and Michael Shan­non. Appear­ing in not-so-clear capac­i­ties, Zoe Sal­daña, Tim­o­thy Olyphant, Andrea Rise­bor­ough, and Tay­lor Swift (in her first onscreen role since the round­ly ridiculed Cats) round out the cast.

With his high-pro­file cast and plum place­ment in the thick of awards sea­son by dis­trib­u­tor 20th Cen­tu­ry Stu­dios, Russell’s mak­ing an appar­ent attempt to re-assert him­self in the A‑list ranks he occu­pied dur­ing the 2010s. But with Joy, audi­ences seemed to be cool­ing on his off-kil­ter pres­tige; only time will tell if his capers still have what the peo­ple are look­ing for.

Ams­ter­dam will come to cin­e­mas in the UK and US in November. 

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