Jennifer Lopez’s new crime drama, “Hustlers,” has been a hit at the theater.
The movie is based on journalist Jessica Presley’s New York magazine article, which tells the true story of a group of strippers who hustle money out of Wall Street men after dealing with hardships when the 2008 recession hit.
New girl Destiny, played by actress Constance Wu, turns to the route of stripping as she needs financial support for herself as well as her grandmother who had raised her.
While Destiny tries to take a crack at dancing, she is less than enthused and unmotivated but as she watches Ramona (Lopez) taking control on stage, she goes to her for help.
During this time Ramona and another dancer, played by American rapper Cardi B, give Destiny advice on lap dancing and pole spinning, which is a funny and sweet scene as you see the bond the girls start to form.
For a while everything had been good for the girls as they made a good amount of money, but things started to get rocky when the 2008 recession hit and left their Wall Street customers broke.
When business begins to die down, the girls go their separate ways, leaving Destiny to eventually give birth to a baby girl and making her financial troubles harder.
In times of desperation after the girls find their way back together, Destiny joins Ramona and two other dancers, played by actresses Keke Palmer and Lili Reinhart, in a scheme of slightly drugging rich men at bars and taking them to the strip club to drain their credit cards.
As the scheme brings the girls great amounts of money, Ramona begins to get cocky and brings other girls in on it who aren’t as cautious as Destiny would like them to be.
Eventually the cops begin to suspect something is going on when men start reporting they had been drugged and robbed by strippers.
“Hustlers” features great performances by Lopez and Wu. The bond their characters have shows that family doesn’t just have to be blood.
