Mike Bloxham An above average film noir but strangely flat and unengaging. All the ingredients are there for a really great movie but it never quite hits the mark. John Cusack is alright but not amazing, Annette Benning is frankly irritating, Angelica Huston is very good, given the dialogue she had to work with.The story beats aren't very well executed, especially the ending and the dialogue is sketchy in places. Worth a watch for fans of the genre but I wouldn't watch it again. The film simply isn't much fun or particularly stimulating to watch. I'm a little mystified as to why it got 90% on Rotten Tomatoes.

lasttimeisaw An indie crime-drama fixes on a veiled Oedipus complex relationship between a mother and his son, which also involves another pivotal figure, the son's femme fatale girlfriend. One background consensus is that they are all grifters, while the mother is an old-hander, the girlfriend is a slutty self-seeker, they are pros, bar the son is just a small-time crook and being too righteous to go down with the swindle business, what's worse is that he has no sway in juggle with these two women, after the mother hoodwinks a handsome amount of cash from her ferocious boss, which ignites a series of cutthroat happenings which ends in a quite blatantly bold epilogue. The film was an Oscar dark horse in 1991, amassed 4 nominations including BEST DIRECTOR for Frears and BEST ACTRESS for Angelica Huston and BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS for Anette Bening (although I don't consider its script an ace one since there are many marked plot-holes buried inside despite of its Oscar nomination). These two ladies at the most time share an analog aspect (have been mistaken at least twice in the film), Anjelica holds a glaringly formidable aura and her and Cusack's near-incest impulse pushes the film to its culmination of wallowing in a state of indie-charisma. Bening, whose vixen seductiveness has been laid bare unreservedly, pre-empts that the future Ms. Beatty would not earn that title without any man- conquering expertise. John Cusack, top-billed in the film and delivers a marvelous performance as well, whose repeatedly undervalued acting career showed his dexterous prowness at the beginning, sadly, it never kick-started. (All the three performances and the director are among my top 10 ranking, the film barely missed my top 10 though). For director Stephen Frears, the film differs from his more prestigious works, say THE QUEEN (2006), it certainly has a more noir-ish tone in assembling the intensified thrills with an uneven script (just take one example, it never quite explained how the money being left in the car after the accident, so Lilly, Huston's character, has to steal the money from her son). But thanks to Frears, the film at the very least establishes itself as a progenitor of the crime genre in the 90s, where violence is always hidden somewhere and executed where you are unprepared.

Layton September 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.

Rockwell_Cronenberg Man, talk about a slow-burn. Going into The Grifters I was expecting a slick and quick-paced con thriller, but what I got was something much darker and much more absorbing. Director Stephen Frears, working off a script by Donald Westlake (adapted from the Jim Thompson novel) lets these characters get established before they start to bring us into the tangled web they are all weaving.Roy Dillon (John Cusack) is a con man pulling small jobs every day to slowly build up his savings, while his girlfriend Myra Langtry (Annette Bening) is doing anything she can to get by and his mother Lilly (Anjelica Huston) is working on a long play of her own. The tagline of "Who's conning who?" always makes me roll my eyes, but it's actually an accurate portrayal here, as these three play each other back and forth, while the film itself is pulling the veil over the audience.The Grifters is a brooding noir that throws back a lot to the '40s and it's Hitchcock roots, including some direct homages that feel appropriate for the story rather than cheap rip-offs. The film delves into some potentially melodramatic moments at times, but Frears is able to keep things in tune with it's seething roots as opposed to letting things get too theatrical.All three actors are working at top form here; Cusack was just starting to break out and this role should really be considered more among the best of his career, Huston steals the show in every scene and Bening (someone I've always despised) is seductive and very compelling. I thought that Bening was phoning it in a bit at first, but as more is revealed about the character you realize that she's conning herself as much as she is everyone else. Frears crafts this one with a great tone that the actors play into very well, with some powerful sexual undertones and a dynamite finale.