The Grifters (1990)

A devilish, twisted modern day noir with style to spare.

Director Stephen Frears handles the morbid material expertly -- it walks a razor thin line between dark comedy and "too disturbing to enjoy." John Cusack plays the con-man at the film's center, torn between the affections of his mother and his lover. Anjelica Huston and Annette Bening, playing the two women, tear up the screen. Both of them are like femmes fatale who wandered out of the 1940s and ended up here. We can be grateful that they got lost.

A good, good movie.

Grade: A

Fmovies: 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.

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.

The Grifters fmovies. 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

Frears's 'The Grifters' is a bizarre noir-style disturbing thriller with dark undertones of themes such as despair, greed, incest and murder. Unlike most con thrillers, this one does not focus on tricks. Rather it focuses mainly on the characters. Lilly is in it big and she needs (or wants) money. Roy is frustrated and is in an ambivalent state. Myra, uses her weapon of seduction to have her way...including getting Roy back into the game. Then there's a fourth character, money. Which tangles them into a lethal web resulting in severely extreme consequences. It starts off a little slow as the three lead characters are introduced but the pace picks up in the proceedings. The twists and layers are well done as the viewers move back and forth into hating and liking the characters. The final sequence between Huston and Cusack is among the most unsettling scenes and it was brilliantly executed. Yet, 'The Grifters' is far from my favourite Frears film. I pretty much loved his other movies like 'High Fidelity', 'Dirty Pretty Things', 'Mrs. Hendersen Presents' and so on but I felt this movie lacked something even though I myself am a big sucker for weird movies. The three leads deliver solid performances. Cusack is finely restrained and quite intense. Bening is suitably perky, slutty and malicious. Huston is a knock out as she delivers a chilling performance. The score is quite low key (usually a piano track) except during dramatic sequences. The lighting has been well done. 'The Grifters' is intriguing and quite a departure from the usual con flick. In the end, it leaves an unsettling taste.

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." Hu