Amsterdam: Read the script for David O. Russell’s Wild Comic Mystery

Editor’s note: Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series debuts and celebrates the screenplays of films that will appear in this year’s film awards race.

Amsterdam may be named after a place but span the entire world and several decades. David O. Russell wrote and directed the 20th Century Studios and New Regency historical comic, which opened in October and is now streaming on HBO Max.

Russell accompanied Bale to his Oscars The fighter and back in American rush. Bale plays Dr. Burt Berendson, a doctor who restores faces damaged by war and other accidents. His partner is attorney Harold Woodman, Esq. (John David Washington), with whom he served in the First World War. In 1933, the daughter of one of her former wartime generals asked for an autopsy in New York. They become embroiled in a mysterious murder that also affects their time in the war.

The film commemorates Burt and Harold’s service in France, where they meet nurse Valerie Voze (Margot Robbie) in the hospital. They become inseparable and travel together to Amsterdam, where Harold and Valerie fall in love. They reunite with Valerie, as well as Valerie’s brother Tom (Rami Malek) and his wife Libby Vote (Anya Taylor-Joy) in the 1930s when they elude two detectives (Alessandro Nivola and Mathias Schoenarts).

But that’s not all. This stacked cast also includes Ed Begley Jr. in as the first murder victim, Taylor Swift as his daughter, Andrea Riseborough as Burt’s wife Beatrice, Mike Meyers and Michael Shannon as spies, Chris Rock as Harold’s lawyer, Zoe Saldana as Burt’s true love, Timothy Olyphant as the ominous shadowy figure and Robert De Niro as the General, loosely inspired by the real-life General Smedley Baker.

Russell called Amsterdam a personal story about friendship. He first approached Bale five years ago, and Bale stayed with him as he reviewed drafts of the adaptation of some strange but true historical stories. On set, the co-stars vouched for Bale’s signature immersion in the role of Burt.

In Valerie, Russell created a mix of female artists; She turns the splinters she removes from soldiers into works of art. Danielle Osborne and Robbie created some of the work themselves in the film. Burt and Harold’s unit, the 369th New York Regiment, is based on the Harlem Hell Fighters.

To recount these wild antics from World War I to 1930s New York, Amsterdam Shot on the Queen Mary backdrop, Paramount’s New York, various locations in California and some blue and green screen stages. Production designer Judy Becker and costume designer Albert Wolsey handled everything Amsterdam seemed authentic to the time periods in which it was set.

Read the script below.