Hustlers: on one hand, Lorene Scafaria’s drama tells an always welcome story of women taking charge of their own lives; on the other hand, it’s through a criminal enterprise. It’s a minor one, but the film goes to lengths to, while never hiding the fact, justify it. The real issue, however, is how unrelatable and shallow the main characters are. Being hard to care for the characters makes the film feel overlong; the screenplay gambled with a narrative device, but it doesn’t pay off and makes the film’s narrator that much harder to relate to. Constance Wu is fine as the main character, but the real star of the show is Jennifer Lopez; her casting is perfect and her performance matches it; she has the physical exuberance and prowess to convince as a stripper, the warmth to convince as a worried friend, and the hardness to convince as a criminal mastermind of sorts. Most of the rest of the cast is mostly asked to look good in tight tube dresses and stripper gear. The film looks flashy and fresh.