The Grifters

Stephen Frears’ adaptation of Jim Thompson's novel of the same name is a neo-noir set in modern day Los Angeles which tell the story of three career hustlers (aka "grifters"). Roy Dillon (John Cusack) works the short con – chiseling a few dollars here and a few dollars there. His estranged mother, Lilly (Anjelica Huston), travels the country rigging the odds at racetracks for her mobster boss (Pat Hingle). Roy's girlfriend Myra Langtry (Annette Bening) is a specialist in the "long con" who wants Roy to join her in a big scam.

Frears and screenwriter Donald E.Westlake's adaptation largely wastes the evident potential of Thompson’s dark tale of betrayal and desperate lives, clothing its bare bones in late1980s tackiness.

Whilst the screenplay but perfunctorily lays out the plot which is both sometimes hard to follow devolving into a slough of improbabilities (the largest question being why at the end does Lily leave her money in her car and then try to steal Roy’s) and the dialogue at times is repetitious, the real problem is the casting.

The three performances just don't fit together. Cusack had made a career playing, genial boy-next-door archetypes and despite his best efforts he is ill-suited to the part of a cynical, seasoned hustler, let alone one with serious mother issues. Huston, who was Oscar-nominated is much more effective as the hard-as-nails survivor on the other side of the tracks (and particularly good when late in the film she tries to seduce Roy). Bening, who surprisingly appears full-frontal naked in one scene, plays her ditzy but mendacious minx like some kind of wriggling, giggling musical theatre harlot - hardly of the same world as Lily. There is an implication towards the end of the film that she intends to make Roy one of her marks but this is tossed aside for a contrived and pointlessly tasteless resolution.

That The Grifters was co-produced by Martin Scorsese comes as no surprise as it is efficiently packaged. Why however the usually reliable Frears was chosen to direct I have no idea but his work is at best diligent. 

 

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