The Grifters

THE GRIFTERS (1990) ***1/2 John Cusack, Anjelica Huston, Annette Bening, Pat Hingle, J.T. Walsh, Charles Napier. Donald Westlake's slick, serpentine screenplay adaptation of noir author Jim Thompson's novel offers up a juicy, ripe slice of pulp fiction with hip Cusack a slick con artist strictly small time, Huston as his duplicitous, estranged Mobbed up mother on the take and Bening as his slinky gal pal with a few cards up her collective sleeve.

Excellently executed in the rhythms of a perfectly coiled con game about to be sprung with slick precision thanks to fine acting all around and a jolting climax thanks to a steady helm by director Stephen Frears.

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.

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.

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!!!

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.