User reviews

This is one mean movie. It seduces, wraps your arms around you, and they guts you and leaves you stunned. Directed with striking precision and focus by Stephen Frears ("Philomena", "The Queen"), and written by Donald E. Westlake, one of the literary princes of crime fiction, and based off pulp author Jim Thompson's pulpy novel, in a manner so intricate with detail, so hardboiled that it cracks under the weight of each step it takes, one twist of the knife after another.

It's all too good to be true for this neo-noir, even when Martin Scorsese's producing it. Then comes the actors – and my word, are they fantastic in their roles – John Cusack is sly yet undeterred in a role that is a slightly more edgier variation on Humphrey Bogart, with a cross of Lee Marvin, to boot; Annette Bening is simply drop-dead sexy as the woman who thinks she knows it all, yet is a timebomb waiting to explode. The real star of the show is Angelica Huston in a well-deserved Oscar nominated performance, perfectly balancing the ruthless, desperate act with a honest, focused, motherly concern that doesn't feel cliché at all.

Who knew modern day, sunny Los Angeles and Phoenix can be the backdrop of so seedy a neo-noir, perhaps the best since Chinatown? Frears, Huston, Cusack, Bening, Westlake, cinematographer Oliver Stapleton and composer Elmer Bernstein deserve all the praise they can get for creating something so seedy yet starkly beautiful in retrospect.

Man, talk about a slow-burn. Going into The Grifters I was expecting a slick and quick-paced con thriller, but what I got was something much darker and much more absorbing. Director Stephen Frears, working off a script by Donald Westlake (adapted from the Jim Thompson novel) lets these characters get established before they start to bring us into the tangled web they are all weaving.

Roy Dillon (John Cusack) is a con man pulling small jobs every day to slowly build up his savings, while his girlfriend Myra Langtry (Annette Bening) is doing anything she can to get by and his mother Lilly (Anjelica Huston) is working on a long play of her own. The tagline of "Who's conning who?" always makes me roll my eyes, but it's actually an accurate portrayal here, as these three play each other back and forth, while the film itself is pulling the veil over the audience.

The Grifters is a brooding noir that throws back a lot to the '40s and it's Hitchcock roots, including some direct homages that feel appropriate for the story rather than cheap rip-offs. The film delves into some potentially melodramatic moments at times, but Frears is able to keep things in tune with it's seething roots as opposed to letting things get too theatrical.

All three actors are working at top form here; Cusack was just starting to break out and this role should really be considered more among the best of his career, Huston steals the show in every scene and Bening (someone I've always despised) is seductive and very compelling. I thought that Bening was phoning it in a bit at first, but as more is revealed about the character you realize that she's conning herself as much as she is everyone else. Frears crafts this one with a great tone that the actors play into very well, with some powerful sexual undertones and a dynamite finale.

Wanting to test out my testosterone in boot camp I decided to try out for the boxing team and went to the gym with a friend. Neither of us knew anything about boxing. The coach put us both in the ring and said, "Okay, let's see what you can do," or something equally Hemingwayesque. On the first half-hearted swing, Andy dealt me a glancing blow on the upper abdomen with a glove the size and density of a throw pillow. I went down on my knees and grabbed the ropes, thinking I might die from the pain. It had never occurred to me, watching the odd bout on TV, that every time one of those guys got punched -- it hurt! End of boxing career. This is the kind of movie in which, when somebody gets punched in the belly, he goes down and stays down. For several days.

It's a movie for grown ups about grifters -- con people -- who work all sorts of games on one another. It's not "The Sting," which is funny and which is about "the big con," as it's evidently still called, requiring eons of preparation. This film is about people who cheat, artists in their own ways, but not theatrical producers.

John Cusack is handsome in a pale way and delivers a decent performance as a young man who plays "short cons", clipping people out of nickels, dimes, and dollars, although he's been doing it long enough to put away something of a stash.

Annette Bening, his girl friend, is much more into the life, with quite a history. She's very pretty too. She has a gracile figure and minces when she walks. In addition to the sleek clothes she occasionally has on in this film, she wears a big open-lipped smile, speaks in a breathless Marilyn Monroe whisper, and has eyes that sparkle with mischief and deceit. There is murder behind that grin.

Angelica Huston is a puzzle. She's excellent here as a woman who works for Bobo, Pat Hinkle, a pudgy sadist, his best role in a generation. But her appearance is disturbing. It's as if, during childhood, her skeleton couldn't quite make up its mind about how mannish to become, how broad the shoulders should be, how high and boney the pelvic girdle. I don't mean that she is in any way unfeminine because she's not. It's simply that, knowing what her Dad looks like, I see the resemblance as so marked that it's kind of embarrassing to find her attractive.

J. T. Walsh is perfect as the big con artist with that boyishly naive candor that sucks the marks in because it is nothing more than a psychopath's mask.

He has a sympathetic, believable face, though he was stand-offish in person, and it's a shame that he died at such a relatively early age because he's always been a pleasure to watch.

The story has some very dark undertones. It isn't just that Bening is trying to rope Cusak into the grifter's way of life, or that Huston and her son Cusak have been estranged for eight years, or that Huston is skimming off the top while working for Bobo the Dangerous, or that Cusak is trying to minimize his cons. These themes are interesting enough in themselves and would add up to something resembling "House of Games." But it's a lot more Freudian than that. Of all the forms of incest in the nuclear family, mother-son incest is the rarest. And when it happens, or even when the impulse manifests itself, it's a shocker. Huston and Bening, on first meeting, take an immediate dislike to one another and trade open insults. Bening: "I'm Roy's friend." Huston: "I imagine you're a lot of peoples' friend." Bening: "Oh -- NOW I see. Yes, in the light you look easily old enough to be Roy's mother." The hatred is based on a jealousy that only Bening is able to discern. Some outstanding script writing has gone on here.

The lighting and photography are at least up to par, whether out of doors in the sunshine of a race track or indoors, in the dismal dump Roy lives in, the salmon-colored murk of his walls, lamps, and furniture and the clown portraits on black velvet. The score is based on an ironic tinkling oompah tune," although it turns emphatically dramatic when the situation calls for it, and it neatly sidesteps the conventions of the genre.

Watch this if you have the chance. You'll think about it for some time afterward, the way I thought about that blow in the ring.

Years ago, this was one of the films I was quite pleased with myself for seeing. I didn't know much about it, but decided to take a chance on it, with no regrets. From the opening sequence to the end credits I was mesmerized and in awe of events that communicated an entirely alien philosophy. Based on the novel by Jim Thompson, "The Grifters" tells a tale of a world that lies just under the surface of the one we know of. That is of course, if you count yourself among the squares and suckers who often fall prey to the craftsmen of the grift.

With startling precision, intrigue and depth, the story unfolds chronicling the lives of three distinctly different yet intertwined individuals. Their setting and perspective is entirely foreign to the majority of us. The filmmakers portray the grifters' different methods and environments as skilled scam artists. For unless you've had a personal experience having fallen prey or gotten wise to a grifter's ploy, you'll simply have to accept the reality of it. They are out there, waiting for the suckers to be born.

This particularly dark tale is very stylishly directed and moves along at a good pace. Each turn offers another sneak peek into the games played and the tricks pulled. The prey are often unaware of their own victimization as they go on about their business.

Another aspect the film deals with is trust or the lack thereof. Our protagonists spend most of their time scamming, conning and tricking people so much that their sense of trust and decency breaks down. They alienate themselves from everyone, and ultimately can't even trust each other.

And of course, what drama would be complete without a twisted love triangle in the mix with betrayal and murder to keep it interesting. If this doesn't sound like another day at the office, you might just find the workplace of "The Grifters" intriguing. Seeing it today, I enjoyed it as much as I did years ago, before I opened my eyes for a fresh look at the world.

Well, I have to say, with the three main actors, and all the excellent supporting actors, I thought this would really be my kind of film. But it wasn't. I think it was mostly me - I was wanting to watch a movie about grifting, maybe a dark version of "The Sting" or something like that. But this movie is true to it's title - it's about the grifters themselves, not the grift. And I really didn't care about these three that way. So, my rating is based more on what I wanted to see rather than what I actually saw. I needed more grift!!!

From Jim Thompson's pulp novel, a deliciously unsavory mix of immorality, fear and contempt. Three con-artists cross paths in Los Angeles: John Cusack is a small-time grifter waiting for his chance to cross into the big time; Anjelica Huston is Cusack's estranged mother, a cool-as-ice platinum-blonde who bets on horses for an underworld kingpin to change their odds; and Annette Bening is Cusack's sex-kitten neighbor who had a successful 10-year run working a brokerage scam. The film isn't really about double-crosses (though that does ultimately happen)--it has much more of a dangerous, crackling undercurrent than your typical revenge melodrama. However, in the film's unpredictable, high-wire final third, it skitters through some major plot developments with too blasé a shrug, and the audience is ultimately let down. One can forgive the lack of exposition in some of the minor scams (such as a group of happy sailors being rolled by Cusack and his 'found' dice on the train), but the bigger occurrences needed more of a thoughtful hand from the filmmakers. Director Stephen Frears comes on loaded for bear, and his picture is fast and loose, but perhaps he didn't anticipate how locked-in these characters would become to the viewer, and as such the tag at the end is hollow (it seems like a prank). Incredible performances, particularly by Huston and Bening, make it worth-seeing. **1/2 from ****

Here is a modern-day "film noir," if I ever saw one. You get sleazy characters with no morals, brutal attitudes, some interesting photography and a story that is not exactly a happy one - all the ingredients of a good noir. Since the film is a 1990 one and not the '40s and '50s (in which purists think that's the only period for noirs), you also get nudity and profanity.

The best part of the film, to me, is the fact that the three leading characters are so interesting. You never know what these intriguing characters are going to do next. There is an odd mother-son relationship, too - very odd, between John Cusack and Angelica Huston who play "Lilly and Roy Dillon." The third person among this trio of "grifters" (scam artists) is played by Annette Bening, who never looked prettier or demonstrated her lack of morals better than she did here as the wicked "Myra Langtry." You can see all of Bening in this movie, and I mean all. Huston, on the other hand, tries to look sexy but is too hard-looking and certainly no competition for Bening, in age or looks. But Angelica is a terrific actress and I thought her character, was easily the most interesting of the three leads. Cusack, meanwhile, gives an underrated performance: one of the best in his career.

Three supporting guys in here are fantastic: Pat Hingle as "Bobo Justus," J.T. Walsh as "Cole," and Charles Napier as "Gloucester Hebbing." Overall, this is a wonderful cast that does full justice to this unusual crime story.

The story has a mean edge to it most of the way, but that's the style of writer Jim Thompson, who is a very good crime author who wrote the novel on which this movie is based. He has written several fascinating books. Donald Westlake, who wrote the screenplay, is a prolific crime story writer.

There is not a lot of action in this film but when it occurs, it is shocking and brutal. This movie always entertains me every time I view it.

What Lilly Dillon (Anjelica Huston in a long tight dress) is doing in this movie is laying off a bookie's bets. But, like a lot else in this plot-challenged movie, it's not really realistic. The way it's suppose to work is this: the bookie takes in some big time money on a long shot. This understandably scares the bookie since the fix may be on (or the nag might win legitimately) and if so, he's out a whole lot of money. So to protect himself, HE bets on the nag (using a confederate at the track).

This is called hedging. Hedging, whether in sports betting or in the stock or commodities markets works like an insurance policy. But it comes at a price. Take a simpler case. The Yankees are entertaining the Dodgers at Yankee Stadium. The line on the game is Yankees -200, that is, the Yankees are about a two to one favorite. If you want to bet on the Yankees you've got to put up $200 to win $100. If you bet on the Dodgers you put up $100 to win $200. (Actually, the "spread" or "vig" reduces that to $180.) Now suppose the bookie gets a couple of $10,000 bets on the Dodgers. Since his daily handle is usually about half that, he begins to sweat. Sure, he'll have a $20,000-day if the Yankees win, but what if the Dodgers win? Then he's out $36,000 dollars and maybe out of business. So what does he do? He hedges; that is he goes to a bigger bookie or to his Lilly in Las Vegas and lays off the action with a $20,000 bet on the Dodgers. Now if the Dodgers win he breaks even and lives to book another day. If the Yankees win, he still breaks even (instead of winning $20,000). But that's the price he pays for laying off, for hedging. Call it insurance.

Now the problem with all this in the movie is that Lilly cannot be at every race track in the country. So for Director Stephen Frears to make the action plausible he needs to show that Lilly's regular job is to hang out in California (by the phone!) to cover the West Coast tracks in case a lot of strange money comes in that the bookie needs to lay off. Presumably this is what Lilly is doing in the movie. For more realism, Frears could have shown Lilly hanging by the phone, working for several bookies.

Frears has a great cast and they do a fine job. But the plot contrivances keep this from being a really top notch noir flick. Worse stupidity is the scene in which Myra (Annette Bening) finds a motel key on her 100-plus key ring to open Lilly's motel door. Even though Lilly is on the run, apparently she doesn't bother with a second lock, or the chain lock. (Sure.) Second worse stupidity is Lilly sitting in the track's parking lot in full view of the grandstand overhead (although admittedly many feet away) with the trunk of her car open and a drawer full of money exposed for all the world to see. She doesn't have to play with her money in the parking lot. She can wait until she gets to her motel. But this contrivance allows Myra to see the money with binoculars. And as for Roy Dillon (John Cusack) hiding his money inside some strangely thick clown paintings in his living room...I don't think so. And Dillon finding one die on the floor of the dining room car of the train doesn't work either because later he has to "find" the other one (an action we don't see) so he can fleece the sailors with his loaded dice.

Not all the action is unrealistic however. Roy Dillon's little hustle with the flashing of the twenty and the switch to the ten is an actual con done innumerable times; and the reaction of bar keep who catches Dillon in the act is perfect, illustrating how people who work at cash registers feel about people who work little cons on them. And the business beginning when Lilly doesn't lay off the money on "Troubadour," and hears the very sad news on the radio that the horse actually wins the race, and then gets punished by her boss, is realistic because he is out some serious money. By the way, a person in Lilly's position, in effect becomes a bookie herself, if she wants to. She can bet a little less on the nag and pocket the change when the nag loses, as the nag usually will. Of course if she bets nothing, the tote board odds don't go down and so the bookie will know. Worse is when she doesn't bet and the nag comes in. Now she has to pay the bookie out of her own money. In the case of Troubadour, a 70 to one shot, obviously she couldn't afford to pay off and so had to take a beating, literary. The dialogue between her and Bobo (Pat Hingle) is perfect if you understand that he knows that she steals a little, here and there.

Be forewarned that the subplot is Oedipal and spicily played in parts. I'm sure Huston and Cusack had a few laughs off camera, but we are left not really knowing whether Lilly really is his mother or not. (Perhaps that's a good thing.)

All in all there's some nice grifter atmosphere in the movie and Cusack is interesting as a baby-faced little hustler, and Bening is sleazy, sexy and desperate, while Huston is both fawning and cowardly, and sneaky strong. But see this for Huston who makes a complex character real.

(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)

Hollywood versions of the novels of Jim Thompson are a mixed bag to say the least and ironically, it has been two French directors, Alain Corneau and Bertrand Tavernier, who have best captured the nihilism and sheer nastiness of Thompson's world in 'Série Noire' and 'Coup de Torchon'. There has to be an exception of course and for this viewer at any rate it has been supplied by producer Martin Scorsese and director Stephen Frears with a superlative screenplay by prolific novelist Donald Westlake.

Scorsese had long since seen the filmic potential of Thompson's novel but was engaged elsewhere so entrusted the film to Englishman Frears. This proved to be an inspired choice for it is doubtful whether any American director would have dared to give us such a scathing character study, coupled with the fact that it sometimes requires an outsider to reveal the undersurface of American society.

The film takes a while to establish the unsavoury characters and the unforgiving world in which they operate but gradually gains momentum and builds to a devastating final confrontation.

In terms of performances this probably represents the best of Annette Bening, John Cusack and Angelica Huston as the unholy trinity of Myra, Roy and Lily. Bening here gives a nod to Gloria Grahame but without the latter's 'heart' whilst the Oedipal tension between Cusack and Huston is palpable. Huston was by all accounts not first choice for the role but her portrayal is simply astonishing. There are also excellent supporting turns by J. T. Walsh and veterans Henry Jones and Pat Hingle.

Sun-drenched cinematography is by Oliver Stapleton and Elmer Bernstein provides an inspired score.

Stephen Frears once said that 'the only way to learn about films is by making them and by putting one's stamp on them.' This he has done in no uncertain terms and it is sad to contemplate that at the age of eighty-one, he is the only living English director who can truly be termed 'world class'.

Stephen Frears directs this amazing adaption of a Jim Thompson book, which deals with three grifters (a person who swindles one by means of deception or fraud) who are tied to each other relationship-wise. Roy Dillion (John Cusack) is a small town grifter recuperating after a punch in the stomach for being found cheating. He finds his loyalties torn between his girlfriend and estranged mother (Annette Benning and Anjelica Huston, respectively), both of which are big time high-stakes grifters. This film is tense, exiting, and well-acted, but make no mistake about it, even though Cusack is more or less the main character, this IS Anjelica Huston's movie through and through. Her acting in this seems to shine so brightly and generally be on a higher plateau than either Cusack or Benning can hope to ascend to in the film. One of my favorite movies.

My Grade: A

DVD Extras: Commentary with Director Stephen Frears, Screenwriter Donald Westlake and Actors John Cusack and Angelica Huston; 16 minute Making of featurette; The Jim Thompson Story featurette; Publicity and Production stills); and Trailers for "Serendipity", "High Fidelity", Grosse Point Blank", & "40 Days And 40 Nights"

Eye Candy: The future Mrs. Warren Beatty shows everything

this movie has a dark film noir atmosphere that is somewhat intriguing but there is no plot whatsoever.The 3 main characters are one-dimensional and totally unlikable with various degrees of nastiness.One simply doesn't care what happens to them.One expects for a plot to develop at some point,like a scheme or something but it never does.We just get more of the same nasty attitude until some completely needless and superficial ending.Huston and Benning do the best they can with the material.There are movies about con artists that don't bother very much with character development but the good ones have some plot going and especially concentrate on smart con tactics,this movie does neither.The characters are too dumb to impress anyone and too nasty for anyone to care.Boring and wildly overrated.

Most films have one, and only one, protagonist around whom the story is told. But "The Grifters" has three, all of them petty swindlers, desperate for quick cash or good odds at a "long con". And it's the personal relationships among these three criminals, complex, sometimes dark, and almost always motivated by survival, that make this film a pretty good bet.

Roy Dillon (John Cusack), is a trickster, a loner, "on the grift" for the "short con", strictly a nickels and dimes man. His mom is Lilly (Anjelica Huston); she's a middle-aged lady with white hair; she's seductive, cold-blooded, and tough as nails; she's been around the block a few times. Roy's love interest is Myra (Annette Bening), a shapely, fun loving babe who uses her charms to con rich businessmen. These three people are highly manipulative and scheming, on-guard, and mistrustful of each other and the rest of the world.

The film's tone is bleak and gloomy. There's very little "heart" in this film. And that's a problem, because I found these characters not very sympathetic. They lead lives of quiet desperation, grimy and tawdry. Still, "The Grifters" is a crime story in the best tradition of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, a pulpy melodrama about the underbelly of urban America.

The film's structure is conventional, and contains a number of flashbacks. The set-up is tediously long. The second half of the film is better than the first half, in my opinion, because the second half contains more suspense.

Dialogue is direct and tough, like when Lilly makes her point to the ambulance driver who takes Roy to the hospital and is skeptical about Roy's chances for survival: Says Lilly: "My son is gonna be alright, if not, I'll have you killed". Later, she explains the facts of life to her son: "Grifts like anything else Roy, you don't stand still, you either go up or down, usually down, sooner or later". Yes indeed, it's a tough life being a "grifter"; but Lilly is one tough broad.

The film's color cinematography is fine. And the film has a terrific title sequence and a great Elmer Bernstein score at the beginning. Editing, costumes, and production design are all credible.

If you're in the mood for a gritty, bleak story of petty criminals in a well made modern film, "The Grifters" is a good choice. As a bonus, the DVD has an exceptionally good Commentary, with insightful comments from Director Stephen Frears, and actors John Cusack and Anjelica Huston.

As much as I love John Cusack elsewhere, and could probably come to love Annette Bening, they lack a certain grittiness and don't seem to fit here, either in these characters or together. Unfortunately, despite a lot of promise, this seemed like film noir lite, a rather tepid, listless affair, without a whole lot that was original. Bening is often nude and there are incestual overtones thrown in, but those things seemed gratuitous, and like desperate attempts to spice things up. The film does have its moments though, usually involving Anjelica Huston, who was the best thing it had going for it.

There are several scenes that strain credibility, perhaps not uncommon for the genre, but less forgivable in a modern film, like Huston's character hiding the money she's stealing from a mob boss (Pat Hingle, who's great) in open view, Huston not waking up when Bening rattles several keys at her hotel door, or the police seeming to think Cusack's character needed to see his mother's entire body in the morgue. Would Bening really need to sleep with her landlord given what we find out about her later? Maybe it goes to show the amorality in her character, which was certainly matched by the mother, and that pitch black ending. This isn't awful, but it's pretty flat, and unworthy of the accolades it garnered.

A small-time conman (John Cusack) has torn loyalties between his estranged mother (Anjelica Huston) and new girlfriend (Annette Bening) -- both of whom are high-stakes grifters with their own angles to play.

This is an interesting part of John Cusack's career. Not quite an adult, but not quite a kid. He fluctuates between both rather well. He could be 18 or 30, but which is it? He had wanted to make this film "since high school", but when was that?

Nothing better than a story of three confidence artists all trying to scam each other. Especially if their motives do not really become clear until we start seeing all the pieces. Not sure the $20 Miller trick really works, though. You would think a cashier / bartender would look before making change.

When I casually flipped to this film (without even knowing what it was) I at first thought it was an exceptionally good film-noir. You might say the film snuck up on me- I was utterly unprepared for what I was about to see. I was drawn in closer and closer to the tangled web the three characters are stuck in, and utterly mesmerised by the performances. I don't think I have ever been so enthralled by a movie. After the intensely disturbing ending- which is not arbitrary, no matter what some of the reviews complained- I found myself unable to sleep. Rarely does a film have such an effect on me. THE GRIFTERS really does have to be seen to be totally understood; word fail one so easily when discussing great art.

A cinematic experience revolving around characters that are universally unlikable requires director prowess to bring us into a world which we either don't know very well or are curious about enough to buy into what little we know. What we find out leads us to have a new affinity for those able to survive in such a world (bevause grifting is all about survival) or at least a better understanding of the survival mind set. After watching "The Grifters" I have very little of either. This is a direct knock on Director Stephen Frears, whose other movie I've seen, "Dirty Pretty Things" taught us a bit of the survival mindset but didn't take us anywhere worthwhile as well. The premise that people want to experience something outside f their lives so they go to the theater t o be transplanted elsewhere is generally missed in this confusing personality crisis of three connected con artists, the worst played by Annette Bening. Love her elsewhere, but her character in never straight with us, we're not sure of her intentions, and when she gets naked, becomes some playfully doll thing that v=can't stop making up lines that other people would say when not naked and offering their body for some alternative form of payment. She was a very cute but naked mess. John Cusack falls short with his dialog out of a book and not able to inject either affection or sympathy. Why should we care for him and how did he get all that money? His bar scams were so small time they were laughably unbelievable that he was a small time con man. He was below that self described minimal success level of a con artist. That leaves us with Anjelica Huston, who was very believable but that white hair-do took away her power to be approaching middle age sexy. We hear of the big bad wolf, Bobo, and even meet him, but he's a bad guy for a comedy only, not a noir film. Same could be said about the grifting teacher from Roys' (John Cusack) past. It's hard not to like a crime story, but it was impossible to like The Grifters".

In Los Angeles, the smalltime crook Roy Dillon (John Cusack) is hit by a baseball bat in the stomach when he tries to swindle a bar attendant. His mother Lilly Dillon (Anjelica Huston) works in La Jolla for the powerful bookmaker Bobo Justus (Pat Hingle), who owns the Justus Amusement Company in Baltimore, placing bets to change the odds at the track but also stealing some money for her that she stashes in her Cadillac. When Lilly comes to Los Angeles to a horse race, she pays a visit to Roy after eight years without seeing each other, and she finds that he has an internal hemorrhage and sends him to the hospital, saving his life. When the experienced Lilly sees Roy's girlfriend, the slut and con artist Myra Langtry (Annette Bening), she immediately finds that Myra is a roper. But the grieved Roy does not pay attention to his absent mother and decides to travel with Myra to La Jolla to spend a couple of days resting. Myra sooner finds that Roy lives of short-con grift and proposes him a great plan to rope tycoons; further she unravels Lilly's scheme with Bobo's money. When Roy turns Myra and her offer down, the greedy women set in motion a betrayal that brings tragic consequences to each player.

"The Grifters" is an original and sexy film-noir of the 90's. The sordid story presents very well-developed amoral and cynical characters: Roy Dillon that left home when he was seventeen years old feeling that he was an inconvenient to his mother Lilly that delivered him when she was only fourteen years old. There is some never totally clear incestuous relationship between them and in common they are con-artists – Roy a smalltime and Lilly a shark swindler. In conflict with their tortuous relationship is the tramp Myra Langtry, one of the most promiscuous and amoral characters that I have seen in contemporary movies. The performances of Anjelica Huston, John Cusack and Annette Bening have awesome performances and I do not recall seeing the body of Annette Bening so exposed in another movie. The story is totally unpredictable and the end shows what Lilly is capable of doing to survive. This is the third time that I watch this great movie that still surprises me. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Os Imorais" ("The Immoral")

To me, The Grifters reminded me of a plain cheese sandwich. While you specifically order the sandwich for the "cheese" element, without the bread there would be no sandwich at all. When you take a bite, the softness and delicate nature of the bread will give you your first impressions of the rest of the sandwich. It is the first and last thing you taste, so it needs to remain consistent, tasty, and fresh. The Grifters was the bread to your average sandwich. The beginning and end of this film was innovative and creative as was the darkly depressing ending, just like a slice of fresh bread, but the center of the film left much to be desired. The center of the film ruined the entire cinematic experience due to its lack of direction, consistently poor filler, and sub-par feeling that this wasn't the best cheese sandwich ever made, but instead just one created for the masses. It was disappointing to see this film implode from the inside, but one cannot shake those breathtaking moments that anchored this film out of their mind. Director Frears did a decent job, but I think that if Scorsese would have helmed this project, it would have been something entirely different … and enjoyable.

One of my major concerns with this film was the acting. Here we have this gritty, pulp-ish film that really needed to have some powerhouse actors ensuring that we see this darkness from our couches, but instead it seemed like none of the main cast was giving their full potential. I had trouble with Cusack because of his 80s comedy roots. He was my major issue with the film Eight Men Out, and a big element in this one. He just cannot seem to release that raw emotion that takes you away from Cusack the actor and immerses you deeply into the life of Roy Dillon. For the entire film, I kept seeing Cusack (a la Better off Dead…) instead of the powerful character he was supposed to be. The same can be said for the other actors as well. While I do believe that Huston was the stand out player in this film, she wasn't spectacular. Her character was too underdeveloped for us to really have a handle on her issues. I felt no emotion for her when she was having trouble with the mob because I knew nothing of her history. It was assumed, and that is where Frears tumbled this film. Bening, well, was a naked Bening. She spent more time without clothes than really showing us her intellect behind grifting. I realize that nudity was her superpower, but this was a character driven film, and these characters needed more development, more emotion, and more substance than what was presented.

The story seemed choppy to me. While, again, I will state that the beginning segment and ending climax were superbly designed, the rest of the film jumped from one place to another giving us less and less per each jump. It was as if Frears had extra time in his film and needed to fill it with whatever he could to pass the time. I would have loved to see more time with Dillon's mentor, more between Lilly and Bobo, and several more scenes with Myra to fully explain how she fell into this picture. Frears spent too much time filling holes with scenes that were fun, but not poignant. This ultimately hurt the film in the long run because by the end, we didn't care. An apathetic viewer proves that you have lost the battle.

Finally, the element that completely caught me off guard was the mother/son combination that Frears did incorporate well into the story. At first, I thought this was going to be a film about a big grift that would tear down our characters one by one with disgust and distrust, but instead Frears changed it to this wild dynamic between Cusack and Huston. Their chemistry together was decent. While some moments felt like reading was difficult for the two, other moments seemed to send electricity through the air. Frears developed the idea that the vicious circle of life does exist and this mother/son combination is living proof. Roy becomes what Lilly tried to leave him out of, and even falls for a girl that is similar to his mother. Roy is so engulfed in his mother that the ending should come as no surprise when Frears changes themes from mother/son to a near Oedipus complex. It is shivering, but in this film it works. This element kept my eyes focused on the film longer than I should have, but I had to see where Frears was going with this.

Overall, I wasn't impressed. As I bit into this cinematic cheese sandwich, I thought it was going to bring new flavors into my mouth. I was waiting for that surge of intense flavor (which happened on the first and last bit), but throughout the center I was left with nothing more than a couple of slices of cheese that provided me with no fulfillment. The actors could have been stronger. Cusack is still growing and I think that the early 90s were too early for him to try to develop his drama wings. He needed more time, with smaller roles in independent dramas, to fully grasp what he was getting into. I do not see where the awards were needed for this film, but perhaps it is because I had not read the book that this film was based. Maybe it was the darkness surrounding this film, or Bening's nudity, but it just didn't leave that lasting impression on me. Skip it, you will not be disappointed.

Grade: ** out of *****

The Grifters is an ultra slick, ultra dark Neo Noir set in an ambiguous time zone of a fifties stylised nineties. It portrays a world of con artists and narcissistic low life hell bent on unconscious tide into self annihilation. John Cusack plays Roy Dillon a Grifter who plays small time tricks with the various 'marks' who he discovers in various dives and race tracks. Psychological analysis of confidence-men says that they display an arrogance only else where displayed by psychopaths, Cusack plays this out well his ice cool facade dressed in suits that melt him amongst the crowd. Unfortunately for him (both as a character and possibly as an actor) he's got dealings with two incredibly powerful women. Being his main squeeze Myra (played by the always awesome Annette Benning) a lady whose sexual mesmerism and bimbo smokescreen conceals a razor sharp mind of chess master par excellence. Roy's mother (Angelica Huston),Lilly could be Myra's older twin, thus exploring a certain taboo subject that goes all the way back to Greek Tragedy. Stephen Frears (possibly at the height of his power) directs, so you know what your getting is quality. Adapted from a novel by Jim Thomson, a writer whom could out dark James Ellroy or any other devil dog of the hardboiled you care to fling. This is pitch black portrayal of the human heart as thrown into the molten lava consistency of hell.

So first Cusack, then the film. Halfway through High Fidelity, I wanted to put myself out of my misery. Cusack plays a self-absorbed loser-type, or to put it another way, he is what happens when an asshole loses all hope/energy, and just pities himself constantly (for not having a girl) instead of criticizing himself. Turns out this is the guy he plays in almost every film. (Sure Thing comes to mind, though that movie got the Hollywood ending so he actually ends up with a girl.) I hate that guy! So naturally I was expecting more of the same from The Grifters, but to tell you the truth, I was pleasantly surprised. His character was definitely a down guy (grifter means con artist), with lots of troubles, but he didn't seem to harp on anything too much--he actually seemed to have a little determination to clean up his mess. I still was slightly annoyed though. So there it is, take a picture, I doubt it will ever happen again.

Now the film. I'm 23 so I figure I get to be both serious and sophomoric:

Serious-- The movie achieves that "cool" aura. To put it in a nut shell, the colors and camera angles convey well the style of a noir, and a thriller. Bernstein's score is enough 80's to be cool in that 80's way, but not enough to be too dated. It really supports the thriller aspect of the film and shows that he truly is heir apparent to Bernard Herrmann (Psycho, 1960). And aside from Cusack, I really like the other two main characters. Huston has something about her, and she plays those eery scenes (not going to spoil it) really well. And Benning gives us a lot in this movie in terms of character.

Sophomoric-- Benning really gives us "a lot" in the form of, well, getting naked A LOT. Sorry to alienate you folks who thought I had a brain only. Anyway to continue, Cusack's misfortunes seem almost fun to watch--Ha. And even the veteran Angelica Huston turned my head a few times. Not nearly as much as Benning!!!

Weighing all the good stuff against Cusack, it gets a 7/10.

Renowned British born director Stephen Frears has created a very different drama here with "The Grifters". John Cusack, Anjelica Huston and the gorgeous Annette Bening form an intriguing love triangle and all give good performances.

Unfortunately Donald E Westlake's plot (from Jim Thompson's novel) never quite manages to pull you in and you find yourself watching 'from a distance'. Although "The Grifters" did win critical acclaim, it was obviously too off beat to pull a general audience of any considerable size.

Saturday, October 5, 1991 - Video