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.