David O’Russell returns from a seven year hiatus this week with Amsterdam. It’s a typically starry dramedy from the director of Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle but has met with a more mixed response than O’Russell is used to. The film is unlikely to win him his third BAFTA.

Fresh from his god butchering role in the most recent Thor film, Christian Bale both leads Amsterdam and is credited among its producers. He plays Burt Berendsen, a soldier turned doctor, whose prosthetic eye belies his involvement in the First World War.

It was during his time on the Western Front that Burt met Margot Robbie’s Valerie Voze, a nurse, and fellow soldier Harold Woodman, played by John David Washington. The film takes its title from the location of a bohemian retreat in which the trio sought solace from the horrors of war, via drunk and drugs, before Valerie mysteriously vanished. We’ll always have Amsterdam.

A decade on, in post-crash New York, a dramatic reunion for the friends finds them drawn into the real life Business Plot conspiracy. This being the alleged 1933 putsch to overthrow the Roosevelt administration in favour of a dictatorship. That Burt and Harold are also accused of murder only complicates the matter.

Amsterdam is perhaps the starriest star vehicle of the post-pandemic era. Not content with A-list leads alone, O’Russell stuffs his supporting cast with a who’s who of Hollywood.

There are bit parts for Robert De Niro, Zoe Saldaña, Anya Taylor Joy, Bond villain Rami Malek and, Austin Powers himself, Mike Myers. Andrea Riseborough is rather brilliant as Burt’s snooty wife Beatrice and Taylor Swift enjoys yet another scene stealing cameo - as is becoming the pop star’s cinematic speciality.

Each star brings sparkle to the whole, which does indeed boast a number of memorable and witty highlights. Watch for the moment a skeptical Burt is hit by the effects of a narcotic, while arguing that such drugs have no effect.

Where Amsterdam falls down, however, is in its knotty plotting, which confuses at an excessive 134 minutes. There’s little let up and an uneven weightiness dragging at the humorous heels.

That this episode in history is little known to most of the audience only does to compound the issues. Teasing that ‘some of this actually happened’ only works if you care some of it did.