This is a really solid piece of entertainment all around, though it starts to get a bit tedious and repetitive once the actual hustling begins. I know it’s necessary to an extent, but I’ve always found the police angle, ie characters getting investigated/caught, to be a form of dramatic tension that filmmakers just take at face value – when in reality, there’s a lot that needs to be done to make that resonate. Here, we don’t get enough insight into most of the characters’ lives aside from broadly sketched personalities, resulting in the audience not feeling the full weight of some of the major developments in their lives (financial crash, hustling going wrong, getting investigated, etc). Even Wu’s character is pretty rudimentary, and the whole flashback framework the film uses with her character is ill advised and unnecessary.
