The Grifters (1990)

(On TV, November 2022) Confidence games meet neo-noir in The Grifters, a now often-overlooked film that nonetheless goes farther than most would expect. Featuring the intriguing trio of John Cusack, Annette Benning and Anjelica Huston, the film isn’t your fun-and-games con-comedy, but a harsh tale of survival in a cold and murderous world. Cusack plays a conman; Huston plays his mom; and Benning is the seductress that comes between them. There are also, significantly, mob figures and marks to be fleeced—but the trouble starts when the mob figures are seen as the marks to be fleeced. What follows at that point is implacable in the purest noir sense, and that still lends The Grifters some solid credentials even today. Otherwise, director Stephen Frears (working from a script by none other than Donald E. Westlake) keeps an interesting balance between the yellow sunniness of Los Angeles and the growing darkness of the tale. Cusack is young and likable; Benning looks much sexier than usual; while Huston looks far less attractive in dowdy blonde curls—but all do great work in their own ways. The Grifters is meaner than its noir forebears, but that’s the point: it goes where those earlier films couldn’t. The result has aged rather well: it’s not quite a period piece yet, but it does have a timeless quality that still makes it work.