Good start, but then it gets ruined

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

A cinematic experience revolving around characters that are universally unlikable requires director prowess to bring us into a world which we either don't know very well or are curious about enough to buy into what little we know. What we find out leads us to have a new affinity for those able to survive in such a world (bevause grifting is all about survival) or at least a better understanding of the survival mind set. After watching "The Grifters" I have very little of either. This is a direct knock on Director Stephen Frears, whose other movie I've seen, "Dirty Pretty Things" taught us a bit of the survival mindset but didn't take us anywhere worthwhile as well. The premise that people want to experience something outside f their lives so they go to the theater t o be transplanted elsewhere is generally missed in this confusing personality crisis of three connected con artists, the worst played by Annette Bening. Love her elsewhere, but her character in never straight with us, we're not sure of her intentions, and when she gets naked, becomes some playfully doll thing that v=can't stop making up lines that other people would say when not naked and offering their body for some alternative form of payment. She was a very cute but naked mess. John Cusack falls short with his dialog out of a book and not able to inject either affection or sympathy. Why should we care for him and how did he get all that money? His bar scams were so small time they were laughably unbelievable that he was a small time con man. He was below that self described minimal success level of a con artist. That leaves us with Anjelica Huston, who was very believable but that white hair-do took away her power to be approaching middle age sexy. We hear of the big bad wolf, Bobo, and even meet him, but he's a bad guy for a comedy only, not a noir film. Same could be said about the grifting teacher from Roys' (John Cusack) past. It's hard not to like a crime story, but it was impossible to like The Grifters".

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.

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.

Critics invented new words to over-praise this melodrama set in the world of con artists. It tries hard to be a modern day film noir, but has neither the depth nor the range to be considered a success.John Cusack is a small time con artist (or grifter). He has a rocky relationship with his big-time grifter mother Anjelica Huston, who has taken an instant dislike to his floozy girlfriend Annette Bening. Bening is also a grifter and has been prodding Cusack to trade in his small time ways for more big time cons. When the women start a war with each other, Cusack finds himself in the middle.There are so many things that do not work in this film it is hard to know where to begin. First and foremost, would probably be the depiction of the cons. None of them are especially imaginative or convincing - that is when we can follow them. Huston is depicted as a seasoned con artist and her scams - as well as we can follow it - are at least semi-possible. What is not credible is that an old pro like herself would in turn be scamming her boss - organized crime - in such a stupid way that is so easy to uncover. Given that this development sets the action of the latter part of the film in motion, we need to believe that Huston is capable of this degree of stupidity and it just does not fit right with her icy, manipulative character. Cusack's cons are neither entertaining or especially memorable. And Bening's cons basically revolve around her stripping and having sex with anything that moves...that's it. We are supposed to believe that beneath her squeaky voice and dumb blond demeanor that she is really a smart cookie, but her cons require no intelligence and basically require her to act like a tart - end of story. For a film centering on cons, one would think the film could do better.We need some reason to be embroiled in these people. None of them are especially interesting in themselves. Huston is all tough bravado as some kind of insidious dark Madonna, but she is not particularly compelling and never sympathetic. When her boss threatens to beat her to death, Huston's odd choice to suddenly give her character a stutter to indicate fright seems a showy affectation applied by an actress rather than genuine fear experienced by someone afraid to die. Bening never progresses her character beyond that of a rather dim bimbo, who throws a hissy fit when she doesn't get her way. She tries to instigate Huston's death and then tries to assassinate her herself based almost solely on the fact that Huston indicated her disdain of her dating her son. Her reactions seem just a bit out of proportion, even within the parameters of film noir, where emotions are allowed to be a bit heightened.Also, the casting of Cusack is a misfire. He comes off as such a lightweight here. He is not convincing as a con artist and he never seems a match for the women in the film. His romantic pairing with Bening elicits no sparks - acting-wise or sexually. The extended sequence where the fully clothed Cusack hungrily chases a fully naked Bening around the room saying naughty things to her before throwing her over his shoulder so that her bare butt gets the kind of camera treatment that actresses used to demand for their good sides generates more derisive titters than heat. Additionally, some of the latter moments in the film try to exploit some latent incestuous notes that are supposed to be present between Cusack and Huston. The problem is that we sense no such thing before the film pulls such a suggestion out of its butt crack. Worse, when the film explicitly directs us to look for these hints, Cusack's performance still doesn't convey them. Cusack seems completely incapable of generating chemistry with either actress and lacks the hard edge required for a career con artist.The final confrontation in the film does feature a moment of unexpected, shocking violence. Unfortunately, while I was momentarily surprised, it had no lasting emotional impact on me whatsoever. This is probably due to the fact that the characters in this melodrama seem more like plot contrivances that are moved around at the behest of scene directions than actual living beings that interact organically. I would also be remiss in not noting that the final shots in the film of a character descending in an elevator seem a direct rip-off of the final moments from The Maltese Falcon - a far better production that this film will never be confused with.