The Grifters (1990)

Stephen Frears makes smart movies, icydk. This is a 'best work' film for its featured players, young and old: John Cusack, Angelica Huston, Annette Bening, Pat Hingle -- and icon Henry Jones as the quintessential night clerk. Old-timey feel, modern look. Human viciousness codified in rules of 'the grift' -- con artistry. Acquiescence to quiet violences a given along the way. The camera watches, unflinchingly. Comic and disturbing, and instructional.From a 1963 novel about a 25-year-old man by a then-57-year-old author -- so from a sensibility formed by the 1920s, 30s, 40s . . . peppered with lots of quaint jargon, plausibly spoken by fine actors in a modern setting. I kept thinking of Edward Hopper's 1942 painting 'Nighthawks', as if the denizens of Hopper's all-night diner left in cars with automatic transmissions and drove to hotel rooms to watch remote-controlled cable TV.Fascinating machine of a plot compels audience engagement, thus sustains low-key *natural* behaviors of actors playing con artists -- experts at blending in. Subtle work, restraint, discipline. Young actors should watch and learn.

In most films about "grifters", or "con artists", they are almost always the ones the audiences root for, such as the lovable characters in "The Sting", Gondorff and Hooker (Paul Newman and Robert Redford) whose only marks are those who deserve it. In reality, grifters mark anyone they think they can take. And the more the mark has, the more the grifter thinks he or she can take from them. A con artist (aka confidence man or woman) uses camaraderie and deception to convince a potential victim to willfully give them money. In the best con games, the mark doesn't realize he or she has been "taken".Roy Dillon (John Cusack) is a small-con grifter who was taught by an older con artist and magician. He perpetrates small-time tricks, like switching bills at bars, and getting in with strangers to play rigged games of chance. But he's never enacted bigger cons. His mother Lilly Dillion is also a grifter who works for the mobs which own many of horse racing tracks in California. She's paid to bet on long shots to decrease the pay offs in case the long shot wins, using the mob's own money, even though the track itself doesn't know the mob is actually paying into its own betting pool. For example, if a horse had 50-1 odds to win, and Lilly adds money into the betting pool making the odds 40-1, if the horse wins, the mob only has to pay off $40 to every $1 bet instead of $50. But there's a small hitch. Lilly is skimming off the top, betting less money than the mob has given her, and she hides the extra in the trunk of her car.The wild card is a young female grifter name of Myra Langtry (Annette Bening) who was once in a big con game with a man name of Cole (J.T. Walsh). At the film's beginning we learn Roy is going with Myra, but he's not sure about her, and he doesn't know she's a grifter. After Roy unsuccessfully pulls one of his bate and switch the bills games on the wrong bartender which lands him a slug into the stomach, Lilly and Myra meet at hospital. From the get-go we know that Lilly and Myra are adversaries, both vying for the affections of Roy. Eventually, Roy and Myra leave on a road trip.During the trip, Myra recounts her days with Cole and how they swindled Texas millionaires out of thousands in cash. They set up a phony office when oil prices were down and convinced Texas magnates to invest thousands of dollars into a scheme. Cole and Myra would convince the mark they could defraud the stock or bonds market by placing orders depending upon a shift in the market, such as a stock, bond or currency, and then cash in on the profits. The trick was a 7-second delay in which if there was a significant move of a stock and/or commodity up or down on the Tokyo exchange, they could either buy or sell before the information reached New York. When the mark brought the money, and all that was needed was to make the actual transaction, a phony scenario was presented to the mark involving authorities, and the mark and his money would soon part company.But Roy has never tried anything so big before. And his mother Lilly wants Roy out of the con game, before he becomes like her, a loser who has sold her soul to the mob. She is physically punished by one of the mobsters for missing one of the high-stakes races when she takes Roy to hospital, and as luck would have it, one of the long-shots wins, forcing the mob to pay 70-1 odds. We know that this is a tug of war between these two women, the sexy upstart grifter Myra and the lonely loser old grifter Lilly.An excellent film which probably more accurately portrays the cut-throat world of con artists. In reality, some con artists are playing deadly games, not like the characters portrayed in "The Sting", "The Film-Flam Man" and "House of Games". A French nobleman who had invested with Bernie Madoff committed suicide when the fraud was revealed, and others have been killed by con artists. The world of Roy, Lilly and Myra portrays a much deadlier world. While a great and compelling film, I would have liked Myra and Roy to engage the "big con" which in the end they avoid.

Despite all the talent involved -- Huston, Cusack, Bening, Frears and Scorcese -- I was neither engaged nor satisfied with "The Grifters." My wife and I have regularly enjoyed movies about elaborate con jobs. But there's nothing terribly clever about the ways that Huston, Cusak and Bening ply their cheating. Their characters are disagreeable individuals and what happens to them is off-putting and ultimately very bloody. Bening and, especially, Huston turn in pretty good performances but I've never much liked Cusack, and there's nothing in this film to improve his standing as far as I'm concerned. The three of us watching the film on streaming video uttered a collective "yccch" when it ended.

From Stephen Frears comes The Grifters, a highly colourful and riveting film noir. Frears' direction is superb, with smooth shifts between the audacious scams, the sudden violence and the intense rivalry between the characters. The film looks very stylish not just in the cinematography but also in the scenery, editing and costumes. The Grifters also benefits from a cracking, well-paced story and superb writing that is both witty and intense. When it comes to the film's acting, it is very good. Except that John Cusack comes across as rather bland and lightweight. Cusack aside, both Anjelica Huston and Annette Bening deliver power-house performances, and out of a terrific supporting cast JT Walsh and Charles Napier particularly impress. All in all, a wonderful film that succeeds in pretty much all areas. 9/10 Bethany Cox