American Hustle is a con. I don’t mean the film is about a con – which it is – but that it’s a con of a movie. 
Promising a story with actual characters and plot, it’s a meander through moments, some of them okay, that are glued together by obsessively iconic ’70s music and deep cleavage.
Christian Bales’s performance is wasted as are some intriguing scene with Jennifer Lawrence. Much better con movies have been made, including The Sting (1973) and The Spanish Prisoner (1997).
These films have an actual plot and don’t bludgeon you to death with vacuous morality at the end. So see them instead.
my bad side
a writer's blog
Totally disagree. I thought it tantalized you with what you expected to be an iconic Scorcese style camera pan, but once the camera would land on a character whom you expected to button the scene with a cliched line, there would be some sort of bungled dialogue, like a brilliantly broken expectation and welcome original joke when you were expecting some tired 70’s bullshit. Total cinematic Trojan horse. I also thought It was Christian Bale’s best work.
Nicely put. I just wish the ending wasn’t so pat.