The GriftersThey say there's no honor among thieves...even in the family. The Grifters is the story about three con artists in Los Angeles, whose paths intersect as they pursue their own individual marks and routines. Roy Dillon (John Cusack) is the small-time grifter who has a strained relationship with his mother, Lilly (Anjelica Huston), who is herself a crook running playback numbers at the racetracks for the mob. And Roy's girlfriend, Myra Langtry (Annette Bening), who bears a striking resemblance to Lilly--minus ten or fifteen years--is herself a grifter, who uses her charms to hustle men. In this crooked rat race, love trails far behind.
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Adapted from the novel of the same name by the pulp crime writer, Jim Thompson, The Grifters resonates with a film noir vibe. Set in L.A., the opening credits have shots of the skyline, faded to look black and white, with a line from Lorenz Hart's "The Lady is a Tramp", with "grift" highlighted in red. A "grifter" is a con artist looking to seize a monetary gain by tricking someone, and all three of our cast of characters fit the bill nicely. Roy split from his mother at the young age of seventeen, keeping only things that he bought himself, and became enamored with the idea of the magic-like skill which a mentor showcased outside a train station. But more than just showing him how to swap a twenty for a ten and rig a game of dice, he taught him the important lesson to avoid the "long con", a practice too dangerous to attempt without the risk of jail time. As a result, Roy adheres to his own sense of a code, grifting small stuff, but never anything which would get him into serious trouble...until he takes a two by four to the gut from an angry bartender, and his mother manages to recognize in time that he needs emergency treatment from the internal hemorrhaging. Lilly works the bigger money at the racetrack, putting down thousand dollar bets with money she secrets away in a concealed compartment in the trunk of her Cadillac, money she has been skimming here and there from her boss, the alternately intimidating and amiable Bobo Justus (Pat Hingle). When she misses an important appointment at the track, she suffers gravely for it by Bobo's hand, who inflicts a rare kind of torture, both vicious and deceptive; later, they chat about the tailoring of his suit and how Bobo's surprised to learn she has a son. Although the meetings between Roy and Lilly are acrimonious, the sense is that it is so because they have been hurt by one another at some point, something awkward hanging between them that provokes Roy to coolly address Lilly by her first name instead of "mom", and for Lilly to try to deter Roy from getting deeper into crime, trying to pay for his bills, perhaps out of some sense of guilt. When you sense how Lilly and her life have shaped Roy's, his involvement with Myra makes all the more sense. Aside from her appearance, she shares a good deal of attitude and ruthlessness that Lilly possesses, and is a fighter and survivor when she needs to be. Like Lilly, she has had a taste of the "good life" running huge cons on oil men back in Texas, and looking to recruit Roy to be her surrogate "broker" for the same routine she had with her prior partner. Roy's not only adverse to the idea, he's also no dope, and suspects he's being suckered for the long con in short time. Each of these thieves is playing with fire--not just from the illegality of their practices, but the people they bring along into the quagmire.
Were it made fifty years ago, The Grifters would not be out of place alongside some of the greatest film noir classics of the era. The frequent visits to the racetrack, not to mention the narration (voiced by producer Martin Scorsese) recalls the hard-boiled caper flick to rob a racetrack by Stanley Kubrick, The Killing; even the early shot--which is wiped twice into a triptych of Lilly, Roy, and Myra, evokes the same kind of tense urgency found in the chronology of that film. The tough and gutsy dialogue--a lot of it taken right from the source material--is the kind of bold language and speech often found in the genre, in films like Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity. And while strictly speaking not a film noir, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho has an influence on The Grifters, from the encounters at the secluded motel in Phoenix, to the tense interactions surrounding vast sums of money; both Myra and Lilly even look a bit like Marion Crane. The Grifters is a story about crime, but it is also about family, and how the family dynamic can be twisted and perverted when honesty and trust falls to the wayside. Roy takes a morally superior attitude with his mother and Myra, holding to the idea that the money he has earned he made on his own, overlooking the fact that said money was all grifted anyway. Roy has been avoiding his mother because of feelings he has been unable to reconcile; but considering Lilly's been in the game for so long that she's a veritable pro at it, one has to suspect that she's also been pulling some kind of con on her own son from a young age as well. Roy isn't a stupid man, so he has to have figured out what his mother was before he left for L.A., not seeing her for eight years. The lack of trust and conflicted sense of love and affection Roy feels comes from his mother's poor upbringing of him--if not financially, then certainly emotionally. Myra isn't the sweet kitten she plays at, and bears her claws when Roy turns down her insinuations and pressuring, trying to bring him in where her prior beau had been bled dry; she understands the similarities between her and Lilly, and throws it right in Roy's face. The trouble for Roy is not so much that he refuses to go deeper into grifting by adopting the long con, but that he's been in one for all his life, and has always been over his head.
Recommended for: Fans of a pulpy noir film with cool characters, tough dialogue, and a plot with lots of good bends and turns. It's a deep film which forces you to look past the vices of the characters to see them for who they really are, and challenges your sense of trust.
Were it made fifty years ago, The Grifters would not be out of place alongside some of the greatest film noir classics of the era. The frequent visits to the racetrack, not to mention the narration (voiced by producer Martin Scorsese) recalls the hard-boiled caper flick to rob a racetrack by Stanley Kubrick, The Killing; even the early shot--which is wiped twice into a triptych of Lilly, Roy, and Myra, evokes the same kind of tense urgency found in the chronology of that film. The tough and gutsy dialogue--a lot of it taken right from the source material--is the kind of bold language and speech often found in the genre, in films like Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity. And while strictly speaking not a film noir, Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho has an influence on The Grifters, from the encounters at the secluded motel in Phoenix, to the tense interactions surrounding vast sums of money; both Myra and Lilly even look a bit like Marion Crane. The Grifters is a story about crime, but it is also about family, and how the family dynamic can be twisted and perverted when honesty and trust falls to the wayside. Roy takes a morally superior attitude with his mother and Myra, holding to the idea that the money he has earned he made on his own, overlooking the fact that said money was all grifted anyway. Roy has been avoiding his mother because of feelings he has been unable to reconcile; but considering Lilly's been in the game for so long that she's a veritable pro at it, one has to suspect that she's also been pulling some kind of con on her own son from a young age as well. Roy isn't a stupid man, so he has to have figured out what his mother was before he left for L.A., not seeing her for eight years. The lack of trust and conflicted sense of love and affection Roy feels comes from his mother's poor upbringing of him--if not financially, then certainly emotionally. Myra isn't the sweet kitten she plays at, and bears her claws when Roy turns down her insinuations and pressuring, trying to bring him in where her prior beau had been bled dry; she understands the similarities between her and Lilly, and throws it right in Roy's face. The trouble for Roy is not so much that he refuses to go deeper into grifting by adopting the long con, but that he's been in one for all his life, and has always been over his head.
Recommended for: Fans of a pulpy noir film with cool characters, tough dialogue, and a plot with lots of good bends and turns. It's a deep film which forces you to look past the vices of the characters to see them for who they really are, and challenges your sense of trust.