The Hustle is an outsized passion project for Rebel Wilson, a law graduate turned high-powered actress, now breaking out as a Hollywood producer. She pitched the film to producer Roger Birnbaum and production company Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as an update of the 1988 comedy Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, this time with two female con artists Josephine Chesterfield (Anne Hathaway) and Penny Rust (Wilson).
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Hathaway's Chesterfield, who is not quite as buttoned-up as her name suggests, presides over a Mediterranean villa maintained by her long-suffering butler Albert. She also has a hobby - conning money she doesn't need from likely gamblers at the local casino.
She and Josephine meet by chance on a train and a series of laboriously contrived implausibilities result in them becoming partners. But first, Josephine treats Penny to a crash course in the techniques of working at the high end of the business, a ploy which supplies the script - and Wilson - with a prolific source of the pratfalls that make up much of her performance.
At the casino, the pair fix on a young internet tycoon (Alex Sharpe) and go to work on him with one of the hard luck stories that are a specialty of Penny's modus operandi. The director, Chris Addison, sets a punchy pace for the gags but the ending comes with a shot of sentimentality that fits oddly with everything that has gone before.