Towards the end of writer and director Lorene Scafaria’s faithful screen adaptation of Jessica Pressler’s fascinating 2015 article in the New York magazine about the fate of, and I quote, “a few strippers who stole from (mostly) rich, (usually) disgusting, (in their minds) pathetic men and gave to, well, themselves,” Jennifer Lopez as the queen bee Ramona Vega remarks to an empathetic journalist (Julia Stiles) that, “The whole country is a strip club. You’ve got people tossing the money. And people doing the dance.”

The tossers being the wolves (and in some “pathetic” cases wolves in sheep’s clothing) of Wall Street who thought nothing of blowing several thousand bucks on a private dance in a gentleman’s club – and a fistful of dollars more for a hand jive and a knee trembler!

The dancers being a bevy of beauties sporting what Pressler described as “the sort of waist-to-hip ratio scientists have concluded affects men like a drug”. And when the financial crisis struck at the tail end of the noughties, it was a cocktail of drugs in the shape of a “sprinkle” of MDMA (to make the guys happy) and ketamine (to wipe their memory) which Vega together with her protege-turned-business partner Destiny (Constance Wu) employed to extract as much money as possible out of their unsuspecting clients’ credit cards before they regained consciousness.

“Drain the clock,” went their catchphrase. “Not the cock.”

But when their dodgy dealings spiralled out of control, landing one punter in hospital and luring one “outsourced” recruit into a sting operation, the sisterly friendship between Vega, Destiny and a raft of other ravishing if desperate hustlers including Keke Palmer as the love-struck Mercedes and Lili Reinhart as the weak-bellied Annabelle slid south like a veteran stripper on a greasy pole.

“This is a story about control,” whispers an unseen Janet Jackson at the top of the movie. And though the means are dubious, legally and morally, you can’t help but root for the hustlers who in addition to juggling their hopes and dreams with the harsh reality of life (including caring responsibilities for an elderly relative and the “mental illness” of motherhood) have to wait in line for a cut of the money that they alone have earned as doormen, barmen, middle men – in short, men – get first dibs.

It starts off all tits and ass, and there is no shortage of laughter, but make no mistake about it – this is a drama, and a very fine and meaty one at that, which draws excellent performances from the leads, particularly Constance Wu as the brittle Destiny and Jennifer Lopez as the ballsy Ramona, who rather than stand ringside “follow the green brick road” of hustling for a fleeting moment in the spotlight.

Given the shenanigans of Wall Street tossers, who can blame them!

Director: Lorene Scafaria
Writers: Jessica Pressler (magazine article), Lorene Scafaria (screenplay)
Stars: Constance Wu, Jennifer Lopez, Julia Stiles
Peter Callaghan
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