Upon seeing the preview, I was very excited to see Amsterdam. So many superb actors, beautiful lighting, but, closeups of Margot Robbie's glorious artificially enhanced face juxtaposed near WWI early plastic surgery masks are too much accidental irony to handle. Christian Bale is all in with a vintage accent, scrunched face, and bent posture, but the magic doesn't happen.

Actual 1930's films had strange looking character actors, but everyone in this film is impossibly good looking and dressed to the nines. All the WWI nostalgia ignores the fact that the War was a pointless European fiasco. Yes, the only bright light was African-American soldiers falling in love with France and Amsterdam I suppose, and the Harlem Renaissance coming out of that, but this is not the story this film tells. I often reflect on the film The Godfather II as not only a tragic instance of a director catering to actors at the expense of a great American writer, Mario Puzo, but the beginning of a new era in film where the actor is everything. Amsterdam perhaps represents the culmination of this approach. The actors are here in all their glory but the script is lacking.