Subverted Expectations: A Look Back at Hustlers
When first watching the trailer for Hustlers, it looked like any other fun heist movie with an all-star female cast. The public was ecstatic over Lizzo and Cardi B’s comeos—two of the most powerful female artists in one movie together?! Sign me up. Audience members expected another Oceans 8-esk type movie, but got something more with their movie ticket.
Closer to the movie's release, Jennifer Lopez began to get Oscar buzz as critics raved about the film. Its Rotten Tomato score seemed to be getting higher and higher each day—I was shocked. Sure, I thought it would be an entertaining, successful movie, but people were saying it was groundbreaking, even Oscar worthy. I wanted to see what all the hype was about. After walking out of the theater, I understood its praise—and most of all, its duality.
Ultimately, it is a story about the friendship between Jennifer Lopez and Constance Wu’s characters, Ramona and Destiny. Based on a true story, these two women drugged and stole money from Wall Street workers during the 2008 recession. The story is told through the perspective of the article “The Hustlers at Scores" by Jessica Pressler featured in New York Magazine. It is a combination of Ramona and Destiny’s interviews through Pressler’s tape recorder. The audience only hears what the tape recorder captures: when the tape recorder is shut off, the movie is completely silent.
Through Constance Wu’s narration, the story is established, intertwined with bits and pieces of Destiny’s narration. Destiny is a struggling single mother, who holds the responsibility of caring for her grandmother and her child. Ramona is a talented stripper who takes Destiny in, teaching her how to maximize her profits. A couple years later the recession hits, and the strip club loses its main customers: men on Wall Street. Ramona deploys a plan to drug these stock traders and CEO’s, taking their credit cards and spending thousands of dollars at her strip club. They make an insane amount of money—that is, before they are caught.
The movie is categorized as a dramatic thriller on Rotten Tomatoes, but according to Google search it is a comedy. This only proves that Hustlers does not fit in a single category. A genre is defined based on set expectations. Hustlers does not fit the expectations of a dramatic thriller nor a comedy. In comedies, things are often emphasized and dramatized for comedic relief. This is true of Lili Reinheart’s character: whenever she gets nervous, she pukes. Literally every time. This is dramatized to give some comedic relief—whether or not audiences found it funny is up for interpretation. However, the movie also has serious, surrealist elements, like when Destiny describes her recurring nightmare. We see her in the backseat of a car with no driver. There is no sound in this scene, but a tense piano medley. We feel Destiny’s anxiety and lack of control, shown to us through a way most mainstream movies fail to achieve.
Genre films can be dangerously simplified: “A thriller is often about plot, not people. A comedy is often about laughs, not relationships.” Hustlers is an example of the type of nuanced media audiences are craving, which I hope to see more of.
Cover Photo by IMDb. Edited by Madison Case.
