THE GRIFTERS
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1991 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: A lot of impressive names cooperated to create a surprisingly unimpressive film noir crime story. This film pulls its punches by throwing in absurdities at the wrong moment and has at least one surprisingly vicious scene. Rating: +1 (-4 to +4).
A "grifter" is a con-man (nobody calls them "con-persons"), someone who makes a living by fraud. There are little cons and big cons. A small con will net pocket change and maybe a busted jaw. A big con can net in the millions and can get you killed. Con men have been portrayed as likable in THE FLIM FLAM MAN and THE STING. They are seen with a kind of dark awe in HOUSE OF GAMES. Perhaps the most realistic view and by far one of the dirtiest is in THE GRIFTERS, anew film with a superb pedigree that still disappoints. What is the pedigree? It was a novel by Jim Thompson, a crime-story writer who is only now, after his death, reaching his greatest popularity. The film adaptation of his AFTER DARK, MY SWEET is also in current release. Thompson also occasionally did screen work, co-scripting one of the great films of all time, Kubrick's PATHS OF GLORY. Thompson's GRIFTERS was adapted for the screen by Donald Westlake, himself a popular crime novelist and author of books such as BANK SHOT. The film was produced by Martin Scorsese, who directed film noir crime films such as MEAN STREETS and TAXI DRIVER, and directed by Stephen Frears, who also directed MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE, SAMMY AND ROSIE GET LAID, and DANGEROUS LIAISONS. As close as it would be possible to have a spectacular film noir film, this is it. Still, this turns out to be just an adequate crime story, little more.
The film concerns three grifters. First there is 25-year-old Roy Dillon (played limply by John Cusack). Then there is his 39-year-old mother Lily Dillon (played by the oddly mis-cast Anjelica Huston). Unusually mis- castings have a pretty person cast where someone grittier is needed. Here it may be the reverse. Lily looks old enough to be Roy's mother. The story calls for her to be Roy's mother without looking it. She is supposed to look young and attractive, and while Ms. Huston really is the right age for the role--she was born in 1952--she looks too old for the role and dressing her in a sexy dress and stiletto heels does not do it. The third vertex of this dark triangle is Myra (played by Annette Bening), a bouncy young grifter with a background for big grifts. Often her bounces are out of her clothes and onto a bed, particularly when big money is involved. She wants to partner up with Roy in more ways than one, but she and Lily are just too similar and know too much about each other to get along.
(I will try to avoid spoilers in what follows but there will be minor spoilers.)
What is wrong with this story? Why is this only an adequate crime story? First, the plotting is less complex than you would expect. You have three devious characters and one would expect a really devious plot, but it fails to materialize. There are no big surprises in the plotting. The viewer never really feels grifted by the script. Second, parts of this film really do not make sense. The climax of the film is contrived and if it is not a physical impossibility, it is a very strong physical improbability. In another incident, a bullet is fired and the police conclusion about the incident seems completely inconsistent with what would have been the trajectory of the bullet. It is almost comical to imagine the incident as the police must be picturing it to create the required trajectory. While the previous problem in physics is probably from the novel, the trajectory problem seems to be Frears not thinking out the scene ahead of time and could have been avoided.
This is not a bad film, it just fails to materialize into a very good one. The scenes that should carry the dramatic impact lose it because of small absurdities. In my opinion, this film has been over-rated. It would have made a decent black-and-white in the 1940s and it still is just about that good. My rating is +1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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