American Hustle (2013)

Lots of well known people in this 'Who's Conning Whom?" film.  Christian Bale is almost unrecognizable as Irving Rosenfield, a man who you would think could live off his numerous dry cleaning businesses in Long Island, but who has a long standing penchant for scams.  He is married to a high maintenance gorgeous woman (Jennifer Lawrence), and having an affair with his partner in crime, Sydney Prosse (Amy Adams, who is inexplicably seen throughout the movie in a top that needs to be glued to her chest in order to stay on).

Everything is going along as planned until they get busted and FBI agent Richie DiMasio (a surprisingly oily performance by Bradley Cooper) gets the idea that he can score big with the two of them running scams for the bureau.  He neglected to address two issues.  The first is that he got greedy--he wanted to catch a very big fish and he was very naive.  The second is that he forgot that he was dealing with con men.  The first would have been forgivable if he had remembered the second, or if he hadn't been going for the sole glory.  Hoisted by his own petard, the man was.  The movie has had mixed reviews from my group of friends, but I very much enjoyed it (despite its logging in at 2 hours, which in my book is just too long).