The Grifters (1990)

What makes it different from others?

From my favorite movies..

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

The acting in this movie is really good.

Very good film with great performances from Anjelica Houston and John Cusack. But then being biased upon a book by Jim Thompson and scripted by Donald E Westlake it has a lot going for it even before you are aware of Martin Scorsese as a producer. Not sure why it is not better known or more loved but this is probably because it does not feature the male mob boys up front and but instead seeming smaller bit part players (and two women at that). The dialogue is wonderful, snappy , exciting and believable and if things are a bit confusing at the start, not helped by some unnecessary split screen gimmickry, once things get going and we stop worrying about the intricacies of betting odds, sit back and enjoy the fast moving, albeit wordy, action. Great fun - oh but a bit violent too!

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.

The Grifters is a clever and entertaining film with a dark edge. The three protagonists are con-artists who work on different types of con. Their stories eventually intertwine leading to a shocking confrontation.Angelica Huston works for the mob, rigging the odds on horse racing. John Cusack pulls small time cons in bars using sleight of hand. Annette Bening is Cusack's girlfriend and is working her way back up to a con of her own.The film is shot in an authentic 1940's film noir style and the story is a classic piece of thriller writing. Overall I give The Grifters an 8 out of 10. I love this film and I would highly recommend it to lovers of crime movies.

THE GRIFTERS is quite simply brilliant. The basic premise is straightforward: small-time conperson Roy (John Cusack) tries to prosper while trying to sustain his relationships with mother Lily (Anjelica Huston) and girlfriend Myra (Annette Bening). However the love-triangle gets complicated when Lily and Myra try to rival one another for Roy's affections, leading to death and destruction. But what makes this film so brilliant is its precise delineation of the conperson's life: all three protagonists are engaged in the same trade. Sometimes they are outstandingly successful; for the most part, however, they lead hand-to- mouth existences, either wondering about where their next buck will come from, or working for sadistic gangland bosses such as Bobo Justus (Pat Hingle). Director Stephen Frears vividly captures the seedy ambiance in which the three protagonists operate - dilapidated motels, racetracks, darkly lit rooms and the inevitable automobiles. One of the film's main subplots concentrates on the characters' search for personal stability: Lily tries to be a mother to Roy, while Myra acts as a surrogate mother. This produces one of the film's most fascinating plot-twists. Add to the mix the wonderful cinematography in a series of iconic locations, both urban and rural(by Oliver Stapleton), and you have an almost perfect piece.