Amsterdam (2022) is a film with some interesting parts that falters under the Preston Sturges of it all. Burt (Christian Bale), Harold (John David Washington), and Valerie (Margot Robbie) are brought together by injuries sustained during the First World War. After doctor Burt, and lawyer Harold, are nursed back to health by the mysterious Valerie, the three friends head for Amsterdam, where they find freedom from the expectations of the class, race, and sex, for the first time in any of their lives.
Years later they’re thrown back together, and tasked by circumstance, to expose a conspiracy of shady business interests, intent on bringing fascism to America, by replacing president Franklin D Roosevelt, with retired general Gil Dillenbeck (Robert De Niro). As fanciful as that sounds, it’s the truest part of this complicated plot, based on a real conspiracy exposed in 1930s America. It’s hard not to draw parallels between a ninety-year-old conspiracy and contemporary political happenings, but I’m sure that detail, much like the rest of the film, is more coincidence than deliberate.
Darrin // Nightingale 