‘Amsterdam’ Review: David O. Russell’s Star-Studded Plea for Kindness Rings Hollow

A star-studded new historical comedy that’s amusing at best, noxious at worst, and frantically self-insistent upon its own negligible entertainment value at all times as it strains to find the beauty in the mad tapestry of life? That’s right: David O.

Russell is back.

And while the volatile director’s recent work has been damning enough to dampen enthusiasm for this comeback on its own — even without Russell’s various personal controversies — it doesn’t exactly help matters that his first movie in seven years isBut David O.

Russell lives for mess.

It’s his ideal state and favorite subject.

Amsterdam,” as with all of the director’s movies, is clearly the work of someone who wanted it to be this way; someone who wanted his sepia-toned noir about one of the United States’ clumsiest political conspiracies to feel like a humorless farce, a sexless “Jules and Jim” love triangle,

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