Grifters: Film Review

A Story by Abishai100

A review of the 1990 Stephen Frears excellent portrait/film of inventions in resilience, emotions, betrayals, and dowry.

A look at the unusual crime-psyche and family-values challenge resilience film of great neo-noir flair, The Grifters (John Cusack). Thanks for reading,

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Stephen Frears' The Grifters examines the look and feel of explored values and the conscious emotions of negotiated and sometimes compromised human relations under the stress of 'chosen' crime-world adoption lifestyle, requiring a sort of incomplete-distances readings for extra-ordinary resilience or unusual patience and quiet wit. The film is well-casted and each performance is crafted and crafty and offers a nice 'portrait' of the complexity and depth of human minds under the vice of vice.

There's three main characters, Roy (John Cusack), Lily (Anjelica Huston), and Myra (Annete Bening), and each delivers the right-tone/note for extra-ordinary story-presentation in this crime-noir quiet-shocker. Roy's the young idealist 'grifter' (natural wandering thief/con-man) and son of Lily, hardened matron-figure in an underworld of questionable norms and unholy liaisons of an objective 'mature' view. Myra is the unfortunate woman, and grifter too, who loves Roy. Huston was nominated for an Oscar as was then-newcomer Annete Bening, and deservedly so. However, that year Dances with Wolves (Kevin Costner) swept the awards-boards, as we may remember!

Roy decides to become a natural 'grifter' and picks up an apprenticeship-wager with a seasoned old-man grifter in a flashback-sequence complementing his currency-life 'review' of what's the feel of being a man of emotional compromises. He tries to negotiate a 'healthy' link with mom Lily but can't. Myra's the risk-figure who's the misfortune of trying to love Roy but can't help it.

Roy's a natural thief and con-man and Myra loves that part of him too. However, webs of betrayal must be made between the trio, and even between Roy/Lily, mother-and-son, in a 'bad-game' of human emotions and we see the feel and tense 'consciousness' behind negotiations in everyday life. It's part psychology and part crime-consciousness 'intelligence' for cool and gritty storytelling and handsome cinema (with nice imagery too). Some scenes are quite dark. Overall we get the feel of being 'invited' into the brains of such individuals in the American Homeland and why it's 'unnatural' to feel-out what it's like to be unluckily 'half-evil' on Earth...and it's worth a peek/dialysis.