Metacritic reviews

A giddily entertaining homage to female power that illuminates bold ambition in its stars and director alike, Hustlers is the kind of era-defining film that Hollywood didn’t know it needed.

For all its touchy subjects and ambiguous answers, “Hustlers” is never anything less than energetic, freight-train-fast, and impeccably plotted.

With a nuanced script, standout performances, and the adrenaline of a well-executed heist, Hustlers is an entertaining ride with something meaningful to say about power and control.

As Ramona, a one-woman supernova who reigns over a New York strip club, Lopez gives her most electrifying screen performance since “Out of Sight,” slipping the movie into her nonexistent pocket from the moment she strides out onto a neon-lighted stage in a rhinestone bodysuit.

What elevates Hustlers from an entertaining con job flick to something noteworthy is that the racket isn’t inherent to the story Scafaria wants to tell. Many filmmakers will say their film tackles female empowerment, but few do the legwork to make an integral and authentic part of the story.

Lopez slinks through Hustlers with a deceptive ease, as in control of the film as her character is of her situation. It’s the sort of role that only a true movie star could pull off, so much of it reliant on a rare, intoxicating magnetism.

Flashy, fleshy and all-around impossible to ignore, Hustlers amounts to nothing less than a cultural moment, inspired by an outrageous New York Magazine profile (which serves as the sturdy six-inch stilettos on which the movie stands) adapted by writer-director Lorene Scafaria at her most Scorsese, and starring Jennifer Lopez like you’re never seen her before.

Part workplace dramedy, part revenge fantasy, the film weaves together a series of satisfying, organic-feeling turns.

A funny, naughty, enormously entertaining kick in the pants, promising to be an East Coast “Showgirls,” only to wind up a girls-rule “Goodfellas,” leading viewers into a vicariously thrilling underworld ruled by money, drugs, seduction and a sliding moral scale dictated by ruthless realpolitik.

Like the sequinned, simpering erotic dancers it spotlights, Hustlers is a lot smarter than it initially looks. Given a story about a gang of larcenous strippers, audiences might expect little more than dirty jokes and steamy sex. But this slyly feminist movie pushes empowerment, too; it’s a film about being in control, not losing it.