SPOILERS AHEAD

On October 22nd, 2022, my life was changed forever when I watched the movie Amsterdam with a friend.

Was it for the better? No.

Did I waste about two hours of my life? Yes.

Oh but Jaelyn, you may say, doesn’t it star Christian Bale? You know, the really hot psycho guy from that one legendary horror film American Psycho? Yeah, sure, but that doesn’t mean anything. Celebrities make some bad things sometimes. Take Taylor Swift’s new album Midnights for example.

The name of the movie is misleading- that’s a fact. You might think that the movie takes place in, you know, Amsterdam, but it does not. In fact, the movie mainly takes place in New York state. To give the movie some credit, a short part of the film was set in Amsterdam, but not enough to become the title of the WHOLE ENTIRE movie. But wait Jaelyn! How did we get from Amsterdam to New York? Well my dear reader I’m glad you asked! I’m more than happy to tell you, but be prepared, some confusing stuff’s about to go down.

We start with Burt Berendson, a WW2 veteran and doctor now living and working in New York City, specializing in veteran care and reconstructive surgery. Whilst stationed in France during the war, Burt meets Harold Woodsman, an African-American soldier. The two become quick friends but are wounded during battle, resulting in them being nursed back to health by an eccentric nurse named Valerie who makes art out of shrapnel taken from soldiers’ body. Eventually, the three decide to move to Amsterdam where they spend an unspecified (but lengthy) amount of time living life and having fun. However, Burt eventually goes back to New York to be with his wife Beatrice, and Harold (who has now fallen in love with the nurse) follows soon after to become a lawyer after she disappears without a trace.

Fifteen years later, Burt and Harold still remain friends and even help each other out in business. They haven’t heard from Valerie since they left Amsterdam. One day, Harold asks Burt to perform an autopsy on Bill Meekins (a senator and Burt and Harold’s former commander during the war) at the request of Meekins’s daughter Elizabeth who suspects foul play. Burt does the autopsy with a nurse named Irma St. Clair (Zoe Saldana). The pair discover that Meekins had a huge amount of poison in his system which implies murder. Burt and Harold rush to a restaurant for an agreed rendezvous with Elizabeth but find her in a state of distress. She runs away from them down the busy city street muttering incoherently and says the name ‘Voze’ before she is shoved into traffic and killed by a hitman. This hitman then frames Burt and Harold and the crowd of onlookers turn against them.

Burt and Harold head to the mansion of wealthy textile heir Tom Voze based on what Elizabeth had said. They meet Tom, his bratty wife Libby, and find Valerie. Turns out, Valerie is actually Tom’s sister. She had hidden this fact while in Amsterdam from Burt and Harold. Valerie is the one who had told Elizabeth to hire Burt and Harold knowing they were trustworthy. Burt and Harold ask Valerie to join them to clear their names of Elizabeth’s murder but are told no by Tom and Libby who say she has a nerve condition. Ultimately, Valerie joins the team and Tom tells them to check in with Gil Dillenbeck, a military legend and close friend to Meekins.

Burt goes to talk to Dillenbeck while Harold and Valerie spend the day at her house and rekindle their romance. However, the two notice The Hitman from Elizabeth’s murder hanging around outside and follow him to a forced sterilization clinic. Harold and The Hitman get in a fight but he and Valerie manage to escape, discovering that the clinic is owned and operated by an organization known as ‘The Council of Five’. The trio reunite at Dillenbeck’s house who explains that he’s been offered a large sum of money to present a speech advocating for the forced removal of Franklin D. Roosevelt and make Dillenbeck a puppet dictator. The group talk and encourage Dillenbeck to take the deal and deliver the speech at a veterans’ reunion gala to draw out the true mastermind of the plot.

At the gala, Dillenbeck reads his own speech rather than the speech given to him- a plan drawn up by the trio. His own speech reveals that the reason why Meekins was killed was because he’d seen the crimes and atrocities of fascism in Europe and was going to expose it. The Hitman, who had been hiding in the rafters to monitor the speech, shoots at Dillenbeck for his disobedience but is thrown off by Harold and Valerie who see and stop him. The Hitman is arrested and The Council of Five is revealed to be four industry leaders (including Tom) who’re obsessed with Mussolini and Hitler and fascism in general. It’s also at this point that Tom and Libby admit that the nerve disorder Valerie’s suffered from is fake and was actually caused by the medication she was taking to treat the fictitious disorder. The movie ends with Dillenbeck testifying to congress (of course the rich white men that make up The Council of Five aren’t punished at all), Harold and Valerie leaving the country out of safety concerns, and Burt staying in NYC to practice medicine and get cozy with Irma.

Oh yeah, remember her? You know, the nurse chick from like four paragraphs ago? Yeah me neither. Turns out she and Burt had a whole fling throughout the movie that was barely touched on or explained. I don’t really get it either. In fact, there was a part of the movie where the two had kissed during the first third of the movie. Talk about being blindsided. It was at that point that I just looked at my friend with a dropped jaw. She had the same expression. After all, Burt had a whole wife at home! She was estranged, sure, but she was still a wife and friend to Burt all the same. In addition to all the weird plot points that this movie presented, there were a bunch of semi-main characters I didn’t even talk about that played fairly major roles in the movie. This includes Paul Canterbury, an MI6 spy and glass eye producer and his business partner Henry Norcross who is a part of US Naval Intelligence. The fact that the movie still makes sense without them says a lot. Honestly, the production company could’ve saved millions on salary payments had they just cut out the bajillion unnecessary people in the movie.

Okay I’ve been rambling for too long–even I’m getting annoyed with my own writing and I STILL haven’t covered like half the stuff the movie covered. Basically my two cents is this: the movie was confusing, too long, and unnecessarily complicated. But I have been inspired, I do want to go to Amsterdam. I’ve heard it’s beautiful this time of year.