Matching the film's colourful ambience, performances are larger-than-life, anchored adeptly around Bale, who gives Burt remarkable soulfulness beneath his bumbling bluster. His loyalty to his friends is bracingly honest, and Washington brings a jolt of humane intelligence to the chaos as the lawyer Hal. His chemistry with Robbie's artistically alert Valerie is lovely. Side roles offer plenty of scene-stealing opportunities, with De Niro beautifully stepping up in the second half, complete with a properly powerful speech.

Russell's script knowingly weaves contemporary racism into the fabric of the dialog, an idea that expands more obviously in how Hal and Valerie understand they can never be a couple in their home country. The broad approach finds some bite in how the press and public never took this threat seriously, dismissing it as a "cocktail putsch". But evidence later proved otherwise, and the idea that the world's wealthiest people might prop up governments and then pit them against each other for profit no longer feels absurd.

themes, language, violence

4.Oct.22

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