Hustlers review: J-Lo whips up Oscar-worthy creation but stellar stripper cast share the show

Charlotte O'Sullivan30 September 2019

J-Lo up for a best actress Oscar? It could well happen. If you’ve ever enjoyed a performance by the mega-famous yet weirdly under-rated actress (so good in Selena, Out of Sight, Angel Eyes and Lila & Eve) you’ll be thrilled to learn she’s currently enjoying a cultural moment thanks to her starring role in this con-women thriller. 

Not all the attention is entirely deserved. Lopez plays New York stripper Ramona and when we first see her she’s making athletic love to a pole (and humping the floor). Critics have been salivating over this sequence. Each to her own, but it struck me as an empty ad for strip clubs and J-Lo’s ageless bod. 

Everything else about her performance, however, lives up to the hype. Ramona (handy with a tampon and the proud owner of a womb-like fur coat) is simultaneously manic, manipulative, flaky, tender and formidable. It’s meant as a compliment when strong females are called ballsy, but it would be truer to say that J-Lo’s extraordinary creation is vagina-y. 

The plot is inspired by the case of Samantha Barbash who, after the 2008 financial crash, thought of a way to part former clients from their cash.  In the movie Ramona and several younger strippers — including Dorothy/Destiny (Constance Wu), Mercedes (Keke Palmer), and Annabelle (Lili Reinhart) — drug successful, married men so they can extract pin numbers. Armed with this info, the group all but empty the men’s bank accounts, safe in the knowledge that the “victims” will be too embarrassed to go to the cops. 

Writer-director Lorene Scafaria isn’t anti-male or even anti-wealth, but she is fascinated by what happens when men and rich people aren’t in the room. 
 

All the significant relationships are between mothers and daughters or mothers and surrogate daughters. At times there’s an agonising level of tension (will members of the gang betray each other?). Yet, ultimately, the film celebrates the camaraderie that can exist between those at the bottom of the pile.

Wu is totally convincing as the smart, ambitious, increasingly tight-mouthed Dorothy. Whether “cooking” drugs, fake-crying outside an ER ward or warily discussing her criminal past with a journalist (Julia Stiles), Dorothy is so much more than Ramona’s foil. The same goes for rappers Cardi B and Lizzo, who pop up early on as blithe and effortlessly droll strippers. It seems only right that J-Lo (however glorious) doesn’t steal the show.

Hustlers, in pictures

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