This whole country’s a strip club. Or so says Jennifer Lopez’s hard-stripping, drug-dosing, cash-stealing Ramona. A stripper with a heart of mink fur, Ramona posits, “Someone’s got the money and the rest of us dance for it.” Her solution to this American ordeal is a brand of laissez-faire free market exchange: dress to kill, ensnare rich dudes, add drugs, run up their credit cards. Ramona and her merry band of clothing-optional pilferers trade in hitting the pole to hitting credit limits. And their gambit works. Skipping the whole lap dance flesh transaction and getting straight to the knock-out bling-bling money-please of it all, Ramona runs a crew of ambitious and unscrupulous ladies who take from the rich and give to themselves.

The real-life story is one of the stranger than fiction variety: a crew of Robin Hood-esque strippers reeling in the dough; showered in designer clothing, driving fresh wheels, battling to close closets full of costly pumps. And facing no consequences for years. But every dog has its day. Endless nights of drugs, deceit, and indifference can only last so long. “Ramona” (not the offender’s real name) and her dastardly collective become the subject of a viral New York Magazine article from Jessica Pressler (played here by Julia Stiles) called “The Hustlers at Scores” after their lawless moonlight enterprise finally comes to light and the film inter-splices their dirty deeds with the inevitable aftermath that follows.

Written and directed by Lorene Scafaria (The Meddler), Hustlers is the kind of movie that one might confuse for a guilty pleasure, were it not also borderline great. It has its drawbacks; the pacing is not always on point and can lurch forward at some moments or ritard to a standstill, particularly in the second act; but, like Magic Mike before it, Hustlers is a movie that successfully manages to interweave surfaces pleasures with substantive themes. I mean, who woulda thunk that a movie that features Cardi B advising her coworker to, and I quote, “Empty their cards, not their cocks” would be one of the most astute deconstructions of the 2008 financial crisis in modern film?

Overflowing with T&A, Hustlers earns its R-rating but despite its inherent and obvious sex appeal lacks the slobbering male gaze one might expect from a movie that features J Lo doing a pole dance routine for the ages. At its core, Hustlers is about female empowerment. By any means necessary. Destiny (Constance Wu), like Ramona before her, comes from nothing. Daughter to a deceased immigrant father and broken mother who left her in the care of her struggling grandmother (Wai Ching Ho), Destiny knows the meaning of a dollar bill in a way that the Wall Street men she dances for will never understand.

There’s an implicit understanding that Ramona, Destiny and “sisters” Mercedes (Keke Palmer) and Annabelle (Lili Reinhart) scrap the bottom of the morality well in their billfold-lightening but Hustlers does a fine job separating morally bankrupt actions from morally bankrupt people. The sense of scrappy sisterhood is at the forefront of the picture, building up an us against the world mentality that gives justice to their thievery. They are the offspring that lingers in the shadow of financial skyscrapers. The natural response to a call. In terms of pure moral relativism, Scafaria does a convincing job suggesting that the line is thin, often invisible, between whatever is is these Wall Street bros do from 9 to 5 in suits and ties and the ladies subsequently drugging and robbing them for however much they can. Round and round the circle goes. Who’s getting fucked? Nobody knows.

Skillfully measuring a good dose of deeply-felt laughs into the heist-fueled drama, Hustlers is a gravely pleasing blend of comedy and melodrama, made splendid by a J Lo riding at the absolute top of her game. For a superstar of her name brand caliber, the pop-star-turned-actress has not enjoyed a career filled with “good” movies and for years has been on the cusp of that breakout hit that’ll prove her talents behind the camera. Hustlers, ladies and gentlemen, is that hit. Alongside Constance Wu, who is also fantastic, J Lo is a chinchilla-clad clan mama on five-alarm fire. She’s never been better.

Scafaria’s direction is equally of the breakout assortment as Hustlers is bustling with style with Todd Banhazi’s photography basking the mayhem in an illicit neon glow that lends the picture such obvious visual appeal. And like a great choreographed dance, the ribbing and rich screenplay, provocative performances, Mitchell Travers‘ astounding costumery, and audio-visual panache move in concert to create an explosive late-summer showstopper that entertains, edifies and enchants in lockstep groove.

CONCLUSION: Stripper dramas are on fire as ’Hustlers’ proves to be an electrifying, racy and sharp take on imperiled feminism and American (moral) bankruptcy. J Lo is a wonder to behold, for more reasons than one.