Hus­tlers

For what­ev­er rea­son, the laws of physics do not apply to Jen­nifer Lopez. She spends much of Hus­tlers, writer-direc­tor Lorene Scafaria’s new Good­fel­las-in-G-strings crime pic­ture, in brash defi­ance of what sci­en­tists cur­rent­ly under­stand about grav­i­ty. That goes for her stal­lionesque body, a graven image for the wor­ship­ful cam­era to cow­er before, seem­ing­ly only tauter and stronger after fifty years. 

Same for her moves as strip­per queen Ramona Vega, each knee hook and table­top twirl a seem­ing act of lev­i­ta­tion. But that’s also true of her in a more holis­tic sense, as Lopez com­mands the screen by being her con­fi­dence-exud­ing Jen­ny-from-the-block self, so super­hu­man­ly charis­mat­ic that she may as well be hov­er­ing a few inch­es above the ground.

Though she owns every minute of her screen time, Lopez plays sec­ond lead to Con­stance Wu, star­ring as new girl at the club Dorothy (tak­ing the nom de pole Des­tiny). Togeth­er, they con­coct a scheme to drug and fleece Wall Street dirt­bags for thou­sands a pop after the finan­cial crash of 2008 leaves the lap­dance indus­try hurting. 

Flash-for­wards frame the small crime ring’s whirl­wind rise and fall, show­ing the reporter (Julia Stiles) who penned the New York Mag­a­zine arti­cle on which the film is based inter­view­ing Dorothy years lat­er. These con­ver­sa­tions give Scafaria’s script ample oppor­tu­ni­ty to com­ment and edi­to­ri­alise on the account of events, most­ly in a trans­par­ent mouth­piece-of-the-author capac­i­ty, as when Dorothy blunt­ly states that she doesn’t want this sto­ry to come off as demon­is­ing her cowork­ers as per­fid­i­ous thieves.

Set­ting aside Scafaria’s ten­den­cy to show and then tell for good mea­sure — the final line spells out the mean­ing of the film in gigan­tic neon cur­sive — her com­men­tary on the messy inter­sec­tion of cap­i­tal­ist hunger with the sheen of fem­i­nine empow­er­ment rings bru­tal­ly true. At first, the women’s scams could be con­sid­ered a form of hands-on wealth redis­tri­b­u­tion, as they move excess sums away from peo­ple who don’t need them to peo­ple who do — they just so hap­pen to qualify. 

Ramona mem­o­rably describes moth­er­hood as a men­tal dis­ease, but the real brain-warp­er would be the mon­ey, which slow­ly but sure­ly cor­rupts what­ev­er right­eous basis Dorothy, Ramona, and their appren­tices (Keke Palmer and a scene-steal­ing, anx­ious-vom­it­ing Lili Rein­hart) could’ve argued that they had. It’s not long before they’re rip­ping off men who lose every­thing instead of men lose lit­tle more than a night’s sleep. Cor­po­ra­tions have made mil­lions per­vert­ing fem­i­nist mes­sag­ing in order to sell slo­gan-embla­zoned crap; this sto­ry shrinks that process to an inti­mate per­son-to-per­son scale.

That crit­i­cal under­cur­rent har­mo­nious­ly coex­ists with a self-imposed man­date to keep things live­ly and mov­ing, with which the ener­getic cast has no trou­ble. Car­di B does some light prop com­e­dy with a vibra­tor, Made­line Brew­er gets some of the choic­est laughs as the domi­no that tips every­thing over, and a sur­prise cameo from a cer­tain musi­cal super­star (I do not mean Liz­zo) clinch­es a sub­lime free­stand­ing moment dur­ing the gen­er­ous­ly fun first hour. 

Each per­for­mance, like the film as a whole, ben­e­fits from a sur­feit of work­place detail pro­vid­ed by the cadre of real-life strip­pers con­sult­ing and work­ing as extras. The col­lab­o­ra­tion over­writes regres­sive nar­ra­tives about strip­ping and sex work, and more­over, it grounds the milieu in pro­ce­dur­al minu­ti­ae that feel real because they are. 

The dress­ing-room chat­ter, the immac­u­late late-’00s/early-’10s song selec­tion, tricks of the trade like stash­ing extra tips in your boots — it demon­strates an atten­tive­ness on Scafaria’s part that makes the cra­zier scenes, such as Dorothy drop­ping her daugh­ter off at school while wear­ing a blood­stained hal­ter top, feel more cred­i­ble. Even though awk­ward sen­tences may some­times be thread­ed through their mouths, these women are real peo­ple, bone and blood and impec­ca­bly toned ab muscles.