"Do me a favor: try to be optimistic about this."
— Burt Berendsen
Amsterdam is a 2022 period mystery comedy directed and written by David O. Russell, in his first feature film since Joy, and boasting a truly impressive Ensemble Cast led by Christian Bale, John David Washington, and Margot Robbie. Other cast members include Chris Rock, Anya Taylor-Joy, Zoe Saldaña, Mike Myers, Michael Shannon, Timothy Olyphant, Andrea Riseborough, Taylor Swift, Matthias Schoenaerts, Alessandro Nivola, Rami Malek and Robert De Niro.
The year is 1933. Burt Berendsen (Bale), a doctor and veteran of World War I, and his best friend Harold Woodsman (Washington), a lawyer and fellow veteran, get implicated in the mysterious and sudden murder of a US Senator. While trying to clear their names, they team up with their old friend Valerie Bandenberg (Robbie), a nurse they met fifteen years ago during the war. As they search for answers, the three friends stumble upon a conspiracy that's far bigger than any of them could have ever imagined...
Loosely inspired by the "Business Plot
," a conspiracy of American industrialists who attempted to fund a coup against President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933.
For the similarly-named Trope, see Freestate Amsterdam.
Amsterdam contains examples of:
- Abusive Offspring: When Valerie learns that her brother Tom gaslighted her into thinking she had a hereditary nervous condition, she realizes he did the same thing to their mother.
- Advertised Extra: Chris Rock and Taylor Swift are heavily featured in the movie's advertising. Rock serves a supporting role and has little screen time. Meanwhile, Swift's character gets shoved in front of a truck within the first ten minutes of the movie, and Burt and Harold being framed for this murder is what kicks off the main plot.
- Alliterative Name: Burt Berendsen and Valerie Voze, though the latter is downplayed since she goes by a fake last name in the beginning of the movie and we only find out her real last name later.
- An Aesop:
- Kindness and compassion can be enough to overcome evil, but all the love in the world means nothing unless people fight for it and stand up for what's right.
- As stated by Irma, true love is based on choice, not need, which Burt puts to use when he chooses his friends over his family and Irma herself over a wife who hates him.
- Artificial Limbs: Burt has a glass eye in order to replace the one he lost during the war. He also helps create these for veterans as part of his medical practice - not only for function, but also for quality of life and covering scars.
- Assassin Outclassin': Milfax attempts to assassinate General Dillenbeck after the Committee realizes that they've been set up, but Harold and Valerie spot him and are able to fight him off long enough so that the police can arrive and arrest him.
- Awful Wedded Life: Burt's marriage to Beatrice is shown to be very shaky, even back in 1918 before he was sent off to war by her parents. In the present day, they live in separate apartments and barely see each other, and when they do, Beatrice constantly mocks and belittles him. Despite this, Burt still loves her and seems optimistic that they can reconcile, at least until the gala when he finally realizes that Beatrice doesn't care about him.
- Back-Alley Doctor: Burt is unusual in that he's actually very well credentialed, but he lost his medical license due to his painkiller addiction and refused to stop practicing to help his fellow veterans.
- Bait-and-Switch: It's implied that the only reason Burt isn't reacting to getting shot is having recently taken a drug that completely deadens all pain. This is further reinforced during the Indulgent Fantasy Segue where Valerie shoots Tom and Libby Voze, who have also taken the drug and also display no pained reaction. However, the truth is that Tom and Libby weren't shot, and the bullet that struck Burt ricocheted off his brace.
- Ballroom Blitz: The annual veterans gala becomes the setting of a sting operation to capture conspirators attempting a coup, and when the conspirators realize it a hitman makes an assassination attempt during the speech.
- Beauty Inversion
- The very handsome Timothy Olyphant plays a creepy and ugly thug.
- A mild case with Burt, who looks like the typically handsome Christian Bale in his youth but becomes a scarred, one-eyed physical wreak who typically wears wild hair and disheveled clothing. While a step down for Bale, he's still fairly handsome.
- Bigot with a Badge: One of the two police investigators the trio have to placate. Fortunately he's the junior partner, and Burt already has a friendship with his senior thanks to their shared combat injuries.
- Bittersweet Ending: The coup attempt is foiled, but the conspirators never face any real justice and Dillenbeck's reputation is smeared by the media. Harold and Valerie return to Europe, since their interracial relationship is unacceptable in the 1930's United States. But Burt vows to stay behind to help make his country a place where they can return one day.
- Black Gal on White Guy Drama: Burt's love interest is a nurse named Irma, a black woman who pretends to be Portuguese in order to escape racial prosecution. This rather neatly allows him to pursue a relationship with her when he chooses to stay in America instead of leaving like Harold and Valerie.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer:
- Burt and Valerie are both very eccentric, especially Valerie, but they're both skilled at what they do and are able to uncover and take down a plot to make America into a fascist country.
- Paul and Henry are even more eccentric than Burt and Valerie are, especially given their obsession with birdwatching, but are also able to relay valuable intel about the conspiracy to the trio and help set up the plan to expose the Committee of Five.
- Chekhov's Gun: Burt mentions frequently that he wears a brace for his injured back, which he hates. After it gets shot, it ends up saving his life since the bullet hit his brace, causing it to take the brunt of the wound it would've caused.
- The Conspiracy: The film centers on one by a mysterious group called the Committee of Five who want to convert the US into a fascist dictatorship by recruiting the popular General Gil Dillenbeck to rally World War One veterans and take power. It was based on the real Business Plot.
- Cool Old Guy: Gil Dillenbeck. Along with being a decorated veteran, he helps the trio and becomes an instrumental part of their plan. When Milfax tries to shoot him for reading a speech other than the one the Committee paid him to read, he's barely fazed by it and simply calls him a coward for trying to shoot him from afar.
- Dances and Balls: A lower class version than usual - it's very important to all the veterans that their annual gala go well because it's a rare chance to socialize with people who get it.
- Dead Star Walking: At first it seems that Liz Meekins, played by Taylor Swift, will play a large role, but she barely has five minutes of screentime before she gets shoved in front of a passing truck and crushed to death.
- Deal with the Devil: Val sees contacting her family as this when in Amsterdam. While they have the influence to get Burt out of prison, she's sure it will also mean the end of their time together. Sure enough she does it anyway for Burt and then vanishes from their lives for fifteen years.
- Death by Cameo: The death of Taylor Swift's character is the inciting incident of the film.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: Lots of period-appropriate naked racism and anti-Semitism to be found.
- In the war, the black soldiers are treated as lesser than their white counterparts (General Meekins, who advocates for equality in his regiment, and Burt, who easily befriends Harold and Milton, are the exception to this) and have to wear French uniforms because none of the white soldiers want to associate with them.
- As several characters note, Harold will likely be the scapegoat for everything that's happened because he's a black man.
- Burt is half-Jewish, which makes him an outcast in the wealthy community of Park Avenue that he's married into, and his in-laws send him to war in hopes that he'll get killed because they don't approve of their daughter being married to a Jew. At one point, her parents dismiss something Burt says by ascribing it to his "Jewish sense of humor."
- While Valerie and Harold's interracial relationship was accepted in Amsterdam, in America it is very much not and they end up leaving the country in order to be together.
- Eccentric Artist: Valerie, who makes folk art out of the shrapnel she pulls from soldiers' bodies during the War.
- Florence Nightingale Effect: Harold falls in love with Valerie, who nursed him and Burt back to health after they suffered injuries while fighting in the war.
- Foreshadowing: The "French nurse" Valerie pronounces her first lines in French, with a thick American accent. While it initially looks like a case of Not Even Bothering with the Accent, the movie quickly states she's actually American, not French.
- Friends Are Chosen, Family Aren't: Burt quotes this trope almost verbatim when he has to return back to New York and leave his friends behind in Amsterdam. He says that while he's pretty sure his in-laws hate him, and he's only obliged to return because they're family, Harold and Valerie are the most important people in his life. It's given a meaningful echo when Burt hears, and later realizes, that love you choose is the most important - which is to say, he chooses his friends.
- Functional Addict: Burt spends a big chunk of the action strung out on various experimental painkillers, and all of the characters' present circumstances are because Burt was arrested for opium addiction. But he's still a competent doctor who works tirelessly for veterans and is sober enough to solve this mystery.
- Genius Bruiser: Harold is The Big Guy for the trio. In everyday life he's actually a highly skilled lawyer.
- Genre Mashup: The film is a madcap screwball comedy, a period piece, a murder mystery, a conspiracy thriller, and a cautionary tale about the rise of fascism in America, all while being a heartfelt tribute to love and friendship.
- Ghostapo: Libby offhandedly mentions that she is a member of an all-female Vril society comprised of mediums, and that she and her "sisters" use drugs to contact "the greater race" from another galaxy. This is a reference to a real-world Urban Legend that such a society (comprised of the mediums Maria Orsic, Traute, Sigrun, Gudrun, and Heike) allegedly existed in pre-Nazi Germany, and was the driving force behind the rise of Hitler. This hints to the fact that Libby and her husband are in cahoots with the Committee of Five.When I get together with my sisters at the Vril Society, we hold a seance where we let our hair down, and it acts as a kind of antenna. It allows us to communicate with the greater race. Honestly, they come from a different galaxy, it’s truly fascinating.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Ultimately of reputation, though he was also ready to die for it. General Dillenbeck was aware the people he was antagonizing had the power to ruin his name and bury his accomplishments, and would gladly do so.
- Induced Hypochondria: Valerie claims to suffer from a nerve disease that occasionally leads to her losing her balance, which confuse Burt and Harold because she never showed any sign of having it back in their time in Amsterdam. It's later revealed that Tom and Libby claimed that she had the condition when she returned home and gave her medication to help her, which is what actually gave her the vertigo she suffers from.
- Indulgent Fantasy Segue: Valerie imagines shooting Tom and Libby in the face, then outright says what she was thinking in front of them.
- Karma Houdini: The Committee of Five aren't charged with anything over their plot overthrow the US government, while Dillenbeck is smeared by them and court-martialed for exposing the conspiracy.
- Mad Artist: Valerie always is eccentric - when Burt and Harold meet her she's making art out of the shrapnel pulled from the bodies of injured veterans as part of her work as a nurse. Exaggerated when they meet her years later at the family estate, uncoordinated and yelling. It's actually because she's unwittingly drugged.
- Major Injury Underreaction: Burt can barely feel anything from getting shot and is still perfectly lucid during the whole denouement, which he explains as being high off of some very potent morphine eyedrops that Tom gave him earlier and his back brace stopping the bullet from lethally injuring him.
- Maligned Mixed Marriage: It's made clear that Valerie and Harold can't live openly together in 1933 America as a result of her being white while he's black. The two leave the U.S. to find a more tolerant place at the end.
- Medical Horror: The Five aren't just involved in plotting a coup against the United States, Harold and Val discover they're also running horrifying forced sterilization clinics.
- Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: A not-so-minor-crime, but still. The mysterious death of a senator leads to the uncovering of a secret organization's plot to overthrow America's government and replace it with a fascist state.
- Mistaken for Junkie: The trio have the bad luck to arrive at Dillenbeck's house just as Valerie's vertigo kicks in, making her look like she's drunk. Burt and Harold have to clarify to Dillenbeck's wife that she isn't and that it's just a medical condition.
- Nerves of Steel: General Dillenbeck isn't one to have his speech interrupted by little things like being shot at. He just takes the time to call the hitman trying to kill him a coward, refusing to move.
- Never Trust a Title: Most of the movie takes place in New York City - Amsterdam refers to the emotional center of the film, when they all became True Companions.
- Never Trust a Trailer: The film's tone is significantly darker and less madcap than trailers would imply.
- No Historical Figures Were Harmed: De Niro's character, Gil Dillenbeck, is a stand-in for the historical Smedley Butler: a respected veteran officer approached by the conspirators to be the face for their fascist regime.
- Non-Action Guy: Burt's role in the trio is The Social Expert. He's brave enough and has the training, but between his brace and glass eye and addictions he's in poor shape to fight himself.
- Noodle Incident: The last time Valerie was in France, apparently she stabbed a guy, hit a woman with a brick, learned to forge papers, and got involved with spies. She does not elaborate on this.
- "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: In both the trailer and the start of the movie, a message reads, "A lot of this actually happened."
- Obnoxious In-Laws:
- Burt's in-laws clearly don't like him, from sending him off to fight in the war to kicking him out of their home in Park Avenue when he wants to cater his medical practice to black veterans, and exchange barely-veiled barbs at him whenever they see him.
- Valerie's sister-in-law Libby is clearly disdainful of her and looks down on her, which she masks as concern for Valerie's health.
- The Place: Amsterdam was the city where the trio stayed during the war and where their friendship was at its closest, though most of the film is set in New York.
- Platonic Life-Partners: Harold and Burt's relationship - deeply loving, though not romantic - is at least as important as Harold's romance with Val. There's also Burt and Valerie's friendship, and while it isn't as much a focus as his friendship with Harold, they're still clearly very close and care deeply about each other.
- Pocket Protector: Burt's back brace.
- The Power of Love: Burt says in his narration that he was able to foil the committee's plot out of love, not only just the love between him and his friends but also his love for the world and everything in it. He encourages the audience to do the same.
- Prefers Going Barefoot: Val truly does, which may be due to her Eccentric Artist personality.
- Professor Guinea Pig: Burt is constantly experimenting with new medications to assist his fellow veterans with both their physical pain and psychological trauma, and he usually tests them on himself. It's the reason for the Running Gag of him randomly passing out in the middle of his practice.
- Relative Error: Burt and Harold both assume that Tom is Valerie's husband when they first meet him; she has to clarify that he's her brother.
- Rule of Symbolism: Canterbury's speech about the habits of the cuckoo bird, pillaging the nests of other birds and replacing their eggs with its own, is a thinly-veiled allegory for the authoritarian conspiracy they're trying to root out.
- Running Gag:
- Burt passing out in his office as a result of the pills he takes to manage his pain. This is apparently such a frequent occurrence that his secretary keeps a pillow around for whenever he collapses.
- Paul and Henry's obsession with birdwatching, much to the bewilderment of any character they come across.
- The Scapegoat: Everyone is very aware that, thanks to the racism of the time, of everyone involved in this convoluted mess, Harold is the one likely to be blamed for the murder.
- Secretly Wealthy: Downplayed. While Burt and Harold knew that Valerie, despite her bohemian lifestyle, came from some form of means, they're surprised to learn that she's part of one of the most influential families in the country and that her brother is the wealthy heir of a large textile company.
- Spy Speak: Several people try to have conversations like this with Burt, but he usually doesn't understand and is left bewildered about why everyone is talking about birdwatching.
- Those Wacky Nazis: Dangerous, yes, and part of a disturbing conspiracy. But also suffering from the farce inherent in real-life espionage.
- True Companions: Burt, Harold, and Valerie quickly befriended each other and became very close during the war, eventually moving to Amsterdam and forming a friendship pact to always protect each other. Fifteen years later, Burt and Harold are still close friends and they hit it back off with Valerie almost immediately after they come across her again.
- Unfriendly Fire: One of Harold and Burt's first interactions is Harold telling Burt, his new officer, that if he's as racist as his predecessor Harold will shoot him. Burt, who doesn't want to be here either and was sent to war to die, takes it in stride.
- Unsexy Sadist: Beatrice, who has a humiliation kink about Burt and his injuries. He hates it but tries to tolerate it at least a little out of misplaced love. It's actually a sign that she's internalized the Nazi rhetoric on disability.
- Urban Segregation: Beatrice's family won't have Burt running a medical practice treating black disabled veterans on Park Avenue - that just isn't done there!
- Uriah Gambit: Beatrice's family doesn't approve of her marriage to a Jew, so they send him to war to die.
- Word Salad Lyrics: One of the trio's first bonding moments is when they sing a "nonsense song," where they pull random words out of a hat and sing a song consisting of those words. It's silly and nonsensical, and they end up singing it to General Dillenbeck in order to prove that they've met him before.
- You Do Not Want To Know: At the end, Val and Harold are persuaded not to return to Amsterdam - the Gestapo would be knocking on their door. When they ask who the Gestapo are, they're told they don't want to know.
- Young Future Famous People: Zigzagged. At this point, Hitler was not particularly famous in America so doesn't get much of a mention, and those who are new to the game speak of the plotters trying to emulate Mussolini, who had been established for some time. However, the plotters and the spies trying to thwart them are very aware of Hitler and the Nazi government and speak of them with either the reverence or the revulsion you would expect.
