'That stripper movie' Hustlers the most surprising film of the year

If someone had said at the beginning of the year that one of the buzziest films of 2019 would be "that stripper movie" you would've rolled your eyes.

Of course, to reduce Hustlers to simply "that stripper movie" would miss this marvellous film's hearty centre — and hearty in both meanings of the word because it's emotionally effecting and it has something real to say about the economic structures that would judge a woman for commoditising her body but not the bankers who sold out everyone else.

Hustlers is also a career-best performance for Jennifer Lopez whose oeuvre of lightweight rom-coms belie the singer-actor's dramatic talents. There's talk of an Oscar nomination, and it wouldn't be hyperbolic to say that she's a real contender.

A heist thriller-cross-social drama, Hustlers' weight is wrapped in the veneer of diamantés and stilettos, but there is real substance here.

The film, written and directed by Lorene Scafaria, is based on the true story of a group of strippers who decide to turn the tables on their clients in the wake of the GFC.

Hustlers' focus is Destiny (Constance Wu), a stripper trying to take care of her grandmother and have enough cash left over after a night of paying off everyone else in the club, including the stage manager, the DJ and the security guard.

She's left clasping little more than a couple of $20 bills after hours of grabby men yelling "Lucy Liu!" at her.

That's when Ramona (Lopez) takes the stage. The veteran stripper is commanding, confident and unashamedly lapping up all the money that's being thrown at her. But anything she's doing is entirely her choice. She's the queen and those men are her fools.

And Lopez dominates this scene — she performs every move around that pole, her toned muscles effortlessly working that dance floor, oodles of charisma flying off the screen. To put it more crassly, JLo is crazy hot.

Destiny is as mesmerised by Ramona as anyone in that club (not to mention everyone in the cinema audience), and the younger woman finds her on the club's rooftop, lithely draped across the concrete as if it was a chaise longue, covered in the most illustrious fur coat.

Like a mamma bear, Ramona takes Destiny on as a mentee and then as a best friend.

In the year before the financial system crashed, the women were raking it in as their rich and lascivious clients splashed their probably ill-gotten cash. Destiny says she made more money than a brain surgeon that year.

But when the GFC happens, the women's pipeline of generous clients dry up as half of Wall Street lose their jobs.

So it's time to get a little creative. Ramona concocts a scheme — definitely illegal — which, Robin Hood-style, takes from the rich and gives to the poor, the poor being them.

Like Venus flytraps, Ramona, Destiny and a growing group of former strippers and sex workers including Mercedes (Keke Palmer) and Annabelle (Lili Reinhart), lure the men in and then max out their credit cards.

While it's not revealed straightaway, there's a framing device in Hustlers in which Destiny's narration is actually her talking to a journalist, Elizabeth (Julia Stiles) — the idea being that these chats are what sets up the 2015 New York magazine article that Hustlers is based on.

It's through the tete-a-tete between Destiny and Elizabeth that the movie reveals itself as a strong tale about friendship, compromise and empathy.

Destiny and Ramona are the heart of Hustlers, their relationship a complex web of power dynamics, love and, eventually, schism. It's here that Lopez does her best work — the hurt and defiance are etched on her face and all memories of Second Act fade away.

Of course, it's not just this core relationship that's so compelling, it's in the camaraderie among the women in the backroom of the clubs, and then the crime syndicate they form.

Cardi B and Lizzo are billed on the posters for Hustlers but temper your expectations because as scene-stealing as they are, they both disappear after the first 15 minutes — and if you can't understand a word Cardi B is saying, that might come as a relief.

The marketing for Hustlers gives the impression that this has The Big Short or Vice (and Adam McKay, the director of both, is a producer on Hustlers) or even Ocean's 11 vibes, but Hustlers is a more grounded and sombre movie than those dramedies. It has its funny moments, but it's probably closer in tone to Widows than to a rompier heist flick.

Ramona, who pushes the whole scheme too far, does so because she can draw a straight line from the "respectable" work of those bankers to "disreputable" strippers shaking their butts for money — "f*** these guys," she says with conviction.

Hustlers is behind that ethos, so much so that 95 per cent of the male characters are prurient creeps with no names.

It's obvious that Hustlers was written and directed by a woman. There is so much care taken to bring these complicated and flawed female characters to life with vivacity, texture and authenticity. They may have done bad things but the movie doesn't judge them for it.

And there's not a single bare breast in this whole movie about a group of women who took their clothes off for a living. How refreshing.