Taglines: They’re giving Dirty Rotten Men a run for their Money.
The film starts in a bar where a guy named Jeremy (Timothy Simons) is waiting for his date, a model-like blonde woman. Instead, he is met by con artist Penny Rust (Rebel Wilson). She pretends that the girl in the picture that Jeremy was waiting for is her sister who was too shy to meet him because she is ashamed of her small breasts, so Penny almost tricks Jeremy into giving her money for her “sister’s” boob job. However, another guy that Penny swindled finds her in the bar with the cops, and she runs out of there, managing to hide among trash bags since her dress looks like one.
Somewhere in France, a Danish man named Mathias (Casper Christensen) spots an American woman, Josephine Chesterfield (Anne Hathaway), sitting alone at a bar. He approaches her and hears her story about winning a lot of chips at the casino. Mathias offers to sell Josephine his mother’s valuable bracelet, only for an Interpol officer, Brigitte Desjardins (Ingrid Oliver), to come by and say that Josephine is an international criminal and that she stole the chips from an old man. In reality, Brigitte and the old man, Albert (Nicholas Woodeson), are in cahoots with Josephine, who is really an English woman posing as a dim-witted American to try and con other men. She manages to swipe Mathias’s bracelet and swap it with a fake.
Josephine boards a train heading toward the French Riviera, where she spots Penny conning another guy by pretending that she is trying to come up with ransom money for her kidnapped sister. Josephine is impressed by how Penny makes the man buy her a bunch of food. The two then meet in another train car where Penny explains to Josephine that she exploits men who think women are too vulnerable or incapable of caring for themselves. Penny also mentions that she is traveling to the town of Beaumont-sur-Mer to con rich men, but since Josephine lives there and doesn’t want competition, she tricks Penny into heading toward Port-au-Prince.
After arriving in Beaumont-sur-Mer, Josephine sees that Penny made it there by tricking a guy named Gregor (John Hales). Josephine has Brigitte arrest Penny by having Gregor identify her while she uses his money to get some kind of water jet pack. While in prison, Josephine goes to Penny’s cell and makes her think that Gregor is a member of the Russian mafia and that she will be killed on the outside. She forces Penny to fly back home, but on the plane, Penny is called to the bathroom to meet with Mathias, who tells her that Josephine is also a con artist and that she fooled her as well. Before Penny decides to fly back to meet Josephine, she and Mathias have sex in the bathroom.
The Hustle is a 2019 American comedy film directed by Chris Addison and written by Stanley Shapiro, Paul Henning, Dale Launer, and Jac Schaeffer. It is a female-centered remake of the 1988 film Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which is itself a remake of the 1964 film Bedtime Story. The film stars Anne Hathaway, Rebel Wilson, Alex Sharp, and Dean Norris, and follows two women who set out to con an internet millionaire. The film was theatrically released in the United States on May 10, 2019, by United Artists Releasing, while Universal Pictures distributes the film in international markets. It received negative reviews and grossed $97 million worldwide.
The Hustle (2019)
Directed by: Chris Addison
Starring: Anne Hathaway, Rebel Wilson, Tim Blake Nelson, Alex Sharp, Ingrid Oliver, Casper Christensen, Emma Davies, Meena Rayann, Sarah-Stephanie, Celine Abrahams
Screenplay by: Stanley Shapiro, Paul Henning
Cinematography by: Michael Coulter
Film Editing by: Anthony Boys
Costume Design by: Emma Fryer
Set Decoration by: Sophie Phillips
Art Direction by: Ashley Lamont, Andrea Matheson, Chris Peters, Paul Toddington
Music by: Anne Dudley
MPAA Rating: PG-13 on appeal for crude sexual content and language.
Distributed by: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), United Artists
Release Date: May 10, 2019
Visits: 26
