The Grifters (1990)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Very Cool!!!

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

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!

Lilly Dillon (Anjelica Huston) is working for mobster Bobo Justus (Pat Hingle) placing bets in horse races. Her estranged son Roy Dillon (John Cusack) does small cons. His girlfriend Myra Langtry (Annette Bening) uses sex. Roy gets caught and gets hit. Lilly takes him to the hospital and misses a job. Bobo punishes her. Myra wants Roy to invest in her scheme. It's the life of grift.These are three individual performances that are all powerful in their own way. Huston is simply incredible. She is so many different notes. Bening is using sex like pulling out her credit card. Cusack has his boyish charms but he's also so broken. These three characters are memorable.

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.

The Grifters is not really a movie, it's a language with verbs only about life and debt. It is an almost comic rhyme about punches to the gut and the moral ambiguities of being on the slide. Even for the con, life ain't free.The actors in this odyssey largely speak in physical grammar and the slick, witty and hard boiled dialog is largely muzak. Anjelica Houston's Lilly postures in brash suits like a school girl far beyond her years - even though she seen a few already. That's not to say Lilly doesn't utter a few daggers now and then - "My son will be all right, if not I'll have you killed."Cusack's Roy barely utters every meager syllable while clenching his gut with a half open stare. Roy sells self confidence and wants to be a real con, but never listens enough to mom, even though she wrote the book. Roy frequently brushes with dangers and somehow mom is always there to save his life. "Second time I gave it to you." Then there is Annette Bennign's Myra, Roy's giggle "Friend," trotting around like a bobble head fixture on a taxi dashboard with clip on earrings but garnering enough attention to slice you from behind for a dollar. You can well imagine she is a lot of people's friend. Just ask the landlord.Each of these performers puts in what well may be the best performance of their careers. Director Stephen Frears uses a restrained hand on Donald E. Westlake's literal script and largely lets the actors play this out on their own.So greed is good? Maybe for Myra. Ultimately The Grifters is about survival and the illusion of getting something for nothing. But even somewhere inside Roy knows not everything is a free ride, "Lilly, I guess I owe you my life.""You always did."