Amsterdam

Amsterdam is a film about friendship, decency, and the courage it takes to defend democracy against people with money and no conscience. It is also, unfortunately, a mess.

David O. Russell assembled one of the most impressive casts of 2022. Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Robert De Niro, Rami Malek, Anya Taylor-Joy, Taylor Swift, Chris Rock, Michael Shannon, Timothy Olyphant, Zoe Saldana, Mike Myers. He gave them a story based on a real 1933 conspiracy in which American industrialists allegedly tried to recruit a retired general to lead a fascist coup against FDR. The premise is genuinely fascinating. The execution is not.

The film opens in Amsterdam itself, with three young people (Burt, Harold, and Valerie) recovering from WWI wounds and living freely and happily in an interwar European city. Their friendship is warm and specific, and the Amsterdam sections are the film at its best. Then we cut to 1933 New York, a murder mystery, a conspiracy, and approximately fifteen subplots introduced over two hours that never quite snap together.

Russell's signature style, the overlapping dialogue, the manic energy, the refusal to let a scene breathe, works brilliantly in claustrophobic settings (The Fighter's family scenes, Silver Linings Playbook's dinner table fights). It does not work in an ensemble mystery-thriller where you need the audience to track plot logic. By the midpoint, I lost confidence that the film was going to pull its threads together. It does not, quite.

There is real content here for conservative viewers to engage with, though not in the way Russell likely intended. The film's patriotism is genuine. General Dillenbeck's speech about the nature of decency and the duty to report evil rather than accommodate it is one of the better pieces of writing in any 2022 film. The friendship between Burt and Harold, a white doctor and a Black lawyer in 1930s New York, is built on loyalty and mutual respect rather than progressive performance. These men are friends because they saved each other's lives in a French trench. That kind of bond transcends the cultural politics of any given moment.

But Amsterdam is also explicitly anti-fascist in a way that carries contemporary resonance. Russell is clearly making a film about more than 1933. The industrialists who want to install a puppet dictator are not subtle allegories. The film wants you to draw the line to the present. That is a choice, and it is a left-leaning one.

The bottom line: Amsterdam is a box-office bomb for reasons that have nothing to do with its politics. It is structurally undisciplined, tonally inconsistent, and overloaded with characters. The friendships at its core are worth saving from the wreckage. The political messaging is clear and center-left. The score lands exactly where the math puts it: MIXED.

Formula: Weighted Score = Severity × Authenticity Multiplier × Centrality Multiplier

🔴 Woke Tropes

Trope	Severity	Authenticity	Centrality	Score
Anti-Fascist / Anti-Nationalist Political Messaging	4	0.7	1.8	5.04
Interracial Friendship as Moral Center / 1930s Race Politics	2	0.7	1	1.4
Anti-Corporate / Anti-Industrial Power Structure	3	1	1	3
Eugenics / Forced Sterilization Depicted as Elite Villainy	3	0.7	0.5	1.05
TOTAL WOKE				10.5

🟢 Traditional Tropes

Trope	Severity	Authenticity	Centrality	Score
Patriotism / Defending American Democracy	4	0.7	1.8	5.04
Veterans / Military Brotherhood	3	0.7	1	2.1
Male Loyalty and Moral Courage	3	0.7	1	2.1
TOTAL TRADITIONAL				9.2

Score Margin: -1 WOKE