“Doesn’t money make you horny?” Jennifer Lopez’s character Ramona Vega asks at the beginning of Hustlers. In the context of the film, the answer is a resounding yes. It’s Ramona’s opening line and she delivers it to Constance Wu’s Dorothy after performing a pole dance so drenched in power and allure that the audience wants to throw wads of cash at her just like the men onscreen. However, the desire that matters most in that scene isn’t theirs, but Dorothy’s. Looking at Wu’s face, it’s unclear whether Dorothy wants to sleep with Ramona, be her or both and despite the fact Ramona and Dorothy’s relationship eventually devolves into major crimes, much of what makes writer-director Lorene Scafaria’s film so compelling is that we end up rooting for its characters anyway.
That wouldn’t be so troubling except the film is based on real life. Back in 2015, journalist Jessica Pressler wrote “The Hustlers at Scores” for New York Magazine, which told the true story of Roselyn Keo and Samantha Barbash, two strippers at Scores strip club in Manhattan who, after the 2008 financial crisis decimated their clientele, ran a scam in which they drugged men with a mix of ketamine and MDMA and maxed out their credit cards. It’s a remarkable story and one which Scafaria’s script follows surprisingly closely —Julia Stiles even plays a Pressler stand-in, Elizabeth. It’s perhaps a simplistic device to allow a future version of Dorothy (whose stage name is Destiny) to comment on her own past as we watch it, but Scafaria and editor Kayla Emter tell the story with such verve that it feels not like a hackneyed choice, but as sharp and snappy a technique as it was when Orson Welles used it in Citizen Kane.
Granted, particularly in the beginning, the film’s slick tone works in large part because Lopez’s performance is so charismatic. There was a lot of talk after Once Upon a Time in Hollywood about Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio being the last genuine movie stars, but watching Hustlers, it seems clear that that honor really belongs to Lopez, an actress more versatile than both (or at least DiCaprio). Ramona is an unrepentant flirt and the audience falls in love with her as quickly as every other character — especially Dorothy. Watching Ramona beckon Dorothy to sit between her legs and share her fur coat as they smoke together on the club’s roof, the chemistry is so potent that you could be forgiven for wondering if they won’t end up in bed together before film’s end.
To its credit, the film leans into that sexual tension, pairing the characters in a number of stripteases for various clients that so recall Showgirls in their campiness that it seems Ramona will soon ask Dorothy to paint her nails sometime. Indeed, Lopez’s commanding sexuality recalls Gina Gershon’s bonkers performance in that film and while Wu is nowhere near as bad as Elizabeth Berkeley, in the film’s first half, she struggles to not let Lopez overshadow her. That said, that’s in some part built into the film’s structure. Dorothy is an audience surrogate meant to let us marvel at this decadent, sex positive world and the fabulous ensemble of actresses who fill it.
There’s Keke Palmer as Mercedes, a clever and frequently hilarious character who becomes part of the eventual drugging and stealing ring. There’s Lili Reinhart’s Annabelle, a fallen good girl who vomits at the slightest sign of trouble, allowing the actress to display a comedic ability the self-serious Riverdale will never allow her to show. Best of all, though, is Cardi B as Diamond. Whether she’s threatening Dorothy to stop distracting her mark or writhing on Lopez as they teach Dorothy to dance, her performance is so effortless and enjoyable that it’s borderline devastating when her character disappears post financial crisis. Each woman is so distinct, empowered and joyful in their work that watching them all dance together when a surprise celebrity appears in the club is one of the most transcendent scenes of the year.
The downside of the greatness of the film’s first act, though, is that it must end so that the plot can take over. As Wu takes more commanding control of the film, she allows the audience to buy into not just the makeshift family the women create as they pull off their scams, but the slow, devastating destruction of Dorothy and Ramona’s relationship—the reason for which remains an unexplained mystery until the film’s final minutes. And while sympathizing with characters/real people who drugged men and stole huge amounts of money feels wrong, it’s also hard to disagree with Ramona as she justifies it by saying they’re just getting back at the same Wall Street guys whose crimes destroyed the economy. “This whole country is a strip club,” she says in the film’s final moments and hyperbolic as it sounds, Hustlers also makes it feel like irrefutable fact.
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