Set in the late 1970s, American Hustle introduce us to Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale), a small-time scam artist who owns a chain a dry cleaners, and also sells forged art and charges people for loans that they never receive. He meets Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams) at a party, and they hit it off. Irving introduces Sydney to his world and she offers to enhance it by posing as "Lady Edith Greensly", a British woman with "ties to banking". This increases Irving's loan scams and a romance ignites between the two. This is a problem, as Irving is married to Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence), an emotionally unstable woman. The scam game is interrupted went FBI Agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) poses as a mark and busts Irving and Sydney. DiMaso is willing to cut a deal with the pair -- if they can deliver four big busts to him, he'll reduce the charges. The brainstorming behind this leads to an idea to convince politicians and other officials that they will be working with an Arab sheik and accept bribes. This operation became known as "Abscam". As the plan gets underway, Richie becomes obsessed not only with having it be a success, but with Sydney as well. This leads to personality clashes and a very volatile situation.

American Hustle is based on a true story and at the center of the film is the FBI's "Abscam" operation, which eventually saw convictions of over a dozen government officials. The film sticks to the centrals details of the real story and it's not surprising that someone would want to make this into a movie, as it's a fascinating and bizarre tale. It's not unusual for criminals who are facing conviction to make a plea bargain, but it is odd for those same bad guys to be asked to mastermind a government operation. Essentially, the FBI was asking these people to run a big scam and teach the feds how to do it. This sort of material has a lot of potential, as it could be played for suspense, or one could focus on the sheer absurdity of it and make it a comedy.

Leave it to David O. Russell to mess this up. In the "Making of" featurette included on this Blu-ray Disc, we learn that Writer Eric Warren Singer had created a script which was a procedural. Russell then came along and decided to focus on the characters. What does that mean? It means that the story takes a backseat to a lot of dialogue scenes which go nowhere. Russell has created yet another "based on a true story" movie where I would have rather seen a documentary than to coming away feeling that I knew very little of what happened in real life.

Russell’s directing is a mess as well. He has attempted to give the movie the look of a Scorsese film and that’s perfectly understandable. But, any semblance of balance or control is shattered by his constant use of push ins. The first one is fine, but the subsequent ones make you wonder if he’s just discovered the dolly. He also misses the boat on the story’s themes. Sting operations like the ones featured here raise a lot of moral questions, most notably in the case of Renner’s character. He was someone who truly wanted to help his constituents and was willing to take questionable money in order to do so. Does that make him a bad person? The movie turns a blind eye to this.

American Hustle spends way too much time on microwave ovens on Blu-ray Disc courtesy of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. The film has been letterboxed at 2.35:1 and the Disc contains an AVC 1080p HD transfer which runs at an average of 27 Mbps. The image is very sharp and clear, showing on defects from the source material. The movie opens with intentionally grainy logos, but doesn’t feature the look throughout. Russell has chosen to go with a lot of Earth tones, so we don’t get a lot of bright colors here. The image is never overly dark or bright. The level of detail is very good and the picture never goes soft. The depth is acceptable. The Disc carries a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track which runs at 48 kHz and an average of 2.8 Mbps. The track provides clear dialogue and sound effects. The period music sounds fine and a party scene provides notable surround sound. The stereo effects are nicely done and show good separation.

The American Hustle Blu-ray Disc is decidedly shorn of extras. The Disc contains eleven DELETED AND EXTENDED SCENES which run about 22 minutes. The bulk of this is taken up by a much longer version of a scene from the film between Sydney and Irving and two versions of Lawrence's very strange "Live and Let Die" sequence. There are a few new scenes, the most interesting of which is a sting which goes awry due to a squash tournament. "The Making of American Hustle" (17 minutes) contains comments from Russell and the primary cast. There is a discussion of how the project came about and how Russell sought to make it his own. The bulk of the piece focuses on the character and the themes of the film. We also hear some details about the creation of the look of the film.