REVIEWS
November 2019 | Sight&Sound | 69
Reviewed by Kim Newman
Spoiler alert: this review reveals a plot twist
With Swedish source material and star, Cuban
leading lady, Italian director and practically
all-British supporting cast, this hardboiled
thriller doesn’t exactly run to much authentic
New York atmosphere. It’s the sort of drama of
multiple compromises, desperate situations and
all-encompassing corruption that Sidney Lumet
used to make a specialty of, but is too cut and
dried to be as effective as Serpico (1973), Prince of
the City (1981) or Night Falls on Manhattan (1996).
Joel Kinnaman’s Pete may sport the proper
tattoos, but he’s overly established as a good guy
in a bad spot. A decorated veteran sniper with
PTSD, Pete was sent to prison on a manslaughter
charge after defending the honour of his wife
in a bar fight with three bikers. He risks his
life in an attempt to save a rookie undercover
cop from a loose-cannon gangster, then is
betrayed by the authorities who persuaded
him to go into deep cover in the first place. It’s
stressed over and over that Pete is only doing
reprehensible things – which extend to sticking
a sharpened screwdriver into the brain of an
admittedly corrupt corrections officer – so that
he can be with his idealised wife and child in
an instance of that movie-logic special pleading
whereby innocent victims of circumstance
can get away with anything just so
long as they have a cute family.
Casting alone decrees how the
forces of law and order will act:
Common, as an African-American
NYC cop, will be a lone force of
integrity and protector of the innocent;
Rosamund Pike, as a blonde FBI agent
who can frown without wrinkling her
forehead, will waver, agonise and
equivocate but do the right thing
in the end; and Clive Owen, as a
glowering middle-aged white
FBI senior, will jump over all
manner of thugs and crooks
to emerge as the real villain.
The finale involves Owen’s character being
ironically brought to book as his own tactics
are used against him – and, incidentally,
leaves the gangster who all this unethical law
enforcement activity was supposed to be directed
at free to continue his scheme of monopolising
distribution of fentanyl in the prison system. This
isn’t so much a cynical, downbeat ending as a
sign of a storyline that’s got lost. Klimek, aka ‘the
General’, virtually disappears from the second
half of the film. This is a shame, since Eugene
Lipinski gives the most entertaining performance
in sight. His Klimek is a brutal, charming,
mock-sentimental patriarch who oozes menace
while bleating about Polish traditions.
Though the title suggests a focus on the
figure of the squealer or whistleblower – as
seen variously in John Ford’s The Informer
(1935), Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront (1954)
and Bob Swaim’s La Balance (1982) – the actual
subgenre this inhabits is the undercover-cop
movie – Deep Cover (1992), Donnie Brasco (1997),
Eastern Promises (2007) – with the caveat that
Pete is a con who has been offered a dodgy deal
rather than a lawman posing as a crook. These
related cycles offer interesting themes and
moral binds. Is betraying a friend who’s also a
murderous criminal justified? How far can an
undercover man go into criminality before there’s
no difference between him and his quarry?
However, Pete’s specific, contrived situation
defuses these thematic bombs leaving him
morally untainted and thus, as a film noir
protagonist, relatively uninteresting. Instead,
The Informer plods through the much less
challenging story of a trained-to-kill tough
guy – Pete’s knowledge of sniper lines is
crucial to his prison-break plan – who
improvises his way out of an
increasingly tough situation.
Even in that, Andrea Di
Stefano’s film feels like
a weak retelling of the
plot of S. Craig Zahler’s
far more baroque and
extreme 2017 melodrama
Brawl in Cell Block 99.
The Informer
Director: Andrea Di Stefano
Certificate 15 113m 26s
New York City, 2017. Ex-convict Pete Koslow cooperates
with the FBI to build a case against his gangster
boss Klimek. When Klimek’s nephew Stazek kills
Gomez, an undercover cop, Pete is ordered to violate
his bail conditions and be sent back to prison so
that Klimek can use him as the inside man to take
over drug distribution in the penal system. Wilcox,
Pete’s FBI handler, promises to protect his wife Sofia
and daughter Anna if Pete helps to build the case
by going to jail, but her boss Montgomery betrays
him. Detective Grens, Gomez’s friend, realises that
Stazek is the murderer, and kills him to protect
Sofia and Anna. Pete escapes prison to avoid being
killed by inmates or the authorities, and Wilcox
and Grens team up to bring down Montgomery.
Pete hopes to be reunited with his family.
Producers
Basil Iwanyk
Erica Lee
Mark Lane
Robert Jones
James Harris
Wayne Marc Godfrey
Ollie Madden
Screenplay
Matt Cook
Rowan Joffe
Andrea Di Stefano
Based on the book
Tre sekunder [Three
Seconds] by Roslund
& Hellström [i.e.,
Anders Roslund,
Börge Hellström]
Director of
Photography
Daniel Katz
Editor
Job ter Burg
Production Designer
Mark Scruton
Music
Will Blair
Brooke Blair
Costume Designer
Molly Emma Rowe
Production
Companies
Aviron Pictures,
The Fyzz, Thunder
Road Films and
Ingenious presents
a The Fyzz Pictures
and Thunder Road
Films production
in association
with Maddem
Films Limited and
Endeavour Content
Executive Producers
Jonathan Fuhrman
Alex Walton
Stephen Fuss
Andrea Scarso
Simon Williams
Jason Resnick
William Sadlier
David Dinerstein
Rowan Joffe
Vishal Rungta
Shelley Browning
Anders Roslund
Börge Hellström
Niclas Salomonsson
Gabriel Yapora
Yas Talaat
Shaun Sanghani
Lee Broda
Jeff Rice
Cast
Joel Kinnaman
Pete Koslow
Rosamund Pike
Erica Wilcox
Common
Detective
Edward Grens
Ana de Armas
Sofia Hoffman
Clive Owen
Special Agent
Montgomery
Eugene Lipinski
Rysard Klimek,
‘The General’
Karma Meyer
Anna
Martin McCann
Riley
Mateusz
Kosciukiewicz
Stazek Cusik
In Colour
Distributor
Warner Bros. Pictures
International (UK)
Joel Kinnaman
Credits and Synopsis
New York, 2014. Destiny tells her story to Elizabeth,
a journalist, and it unfolds in flashback.
In 2007 she is working in a strip club in
Manhattan and barely making ends meet, when
older dancer Ramona takes her under her wing.
Soon they are making good money dancing
as a duo, and they become close friends.
Destiny falls pregnant and stops working.
Meanwhile, the 2008 crash almost closes the club,
which relies on its Wall Street clientele. In 2011,
Destiny returns to work, but it is hard to make a living
from a half-empty club. She meets Ramona again,
and together with friends Mercedes and Annabelle,
they begin to go ‘fishing’: picking up men in bars,
bringing them back to the club, running up bills on
their credit cards and pocketing their percentage,
slipping a mixture of ketamine and MDMA in their
marks’ drinks to make robbing them easier. Finally,
one of their victims goes to the police. The women are
arrested but Destiny makes a deal to avoid jail time.
A year after Elizabeth’s article is published,
Destiny calls her to ask what Ramona
said about her. Elizabeth tells her how
much Ramona cared. Destiny weeps.
Produced by
Jessica Elbaum
Elaine Goldsmith
Thomas
Jennifer Lopez
Benny Medina
Will Ferrell
Adam McKay
Written by
Lorene Scafaria
Inspired by the
article published by
New York Magazine
entitled The Hustlers
at Scores written by
Jessica Pressler
Director of
Photography
Todd Banhazl
Edited by
Kayla M. Emter
Production
Designer
Jane Musky
Sound Mixer
Tom Nelson
Costume Designer
Mitchell Travers
©STX Productions,
LLC
Production
Companies
STXfilms presents
a Gloria Sanchez/
Nuyorican
production in
association with
Annapurna Pictures
A Lorene
Scafaria film
Executive
Producers
Robert Simonds
Adam Fogelson
Megan Ellison
Alex Brown
Pamela Thur
Cast
Constance Wu
Destiny
Jennifer Lopez
Ramona
Julia Stiles
Elizabeth
Keke Palmer
Mercedes
Lili Reinhart
Annabelle
Mercedes Ruehl
Mom
Cardi B
Diamond
Lizzo
Liz
Mette Towley
Justice
Madeline Brewer
Dawn
Trace Lysette
Tr a c e y
Usher
himself
In Colour
[2.35:1]
Distributor
STXfilms
Credits and Synopsis
Wu is a cautious and endearing lead, and
Lopez’s undeniable charisma only seems to
elevate her co-star rather than dwarf her. Ramona
is an enigma, and from the moment she flings
open her coat and invites “Climb into my fur,”
we’re never exactly sure what she is thinking,
or how decent a person she will turn out to be.
Destiny on the other hand inhabits her stage
name – the film explains fully what motivates
each choice she makes. Which, of course, allows
the audience to follow her vicariously into a
rabbit hole of sex, drugs and grand larceny.
At heart Hustlers is a bit retro, both a callback
to the ditzy gold-diggers of the 1930s and a
high-energy, montage-heavy crime caper in
the Scorsese vein, as these likeable good-gals
turn the tables on Wall Street’s most lascivious
wolves. A wisely chosen soundtrack and
music-star cameos from the likes of Cardi
B, Lizzo and (joyously) Usher provide pop-
culture thrills, but it’s those two intense lead
performances and Scafaria’s sizzling script that
make Hustlers such a pleasurable dance.
A RT
PRODUCTION
CLIENT
SUBS
REPRO OP
VERSION
Reviews, 12
