Directed by Stephen Frears & Screenplay by Donald E. Westlake
Based on The Grifters by Jim Thompson, Music by Elmer Bernstein
With: John Cusack as Roy Dillon, Anjelica Huston as Lilly Dillon, Annette Bening as Myra Langtry, Pat Hingle as Bobo Justus, J.T. Walsh as Cole, Charles Napier as Gloucester Hebbing and Henry Jones as Mr. Simms
If you think about it, or being a Tarantino fan you don’t think at all, an actor is very much like a grifter, a con artist. The profession is to make you believe something that is not true. A television show is a short con, but a movie or play is the long con. The major difference is in the fee. The trick is to wait until it gets to Netflix, making you the viewer, the mark. (Remember though; you can’t cheat an honest man, or so they say.)
Right off the bat, I’ll state The Grifters is the best neo-noir film I have seen since Arthur Penn’s 1975 film Night Moves. You might disagree, but you would be wrong. How do you know what I’ve seen, Mister Smart Guy?
Lilly Dillon works for a mob bookie, lowering long-shot horse racing odds by placing substantial bets at the racetrack on ponies, that if they win, could cost the book back in Baltimore big money. (“5 Gs on Glue Pot Future in the 5th at Hollywood Park.”) She plays a dangerous game of cheating her boss, the merry psychopathic bookie Bobo Justus. People who steal from Bobo can’t get life insurance from anyone. No one will lend them money, either. Well, lenders who expect to be paid back.
At age 14 Lilly gave birth to Roy, a troubled kid who took it on the arches at age 17 to apprentice himself as a short con grifter. Petty-ante stuff to the larger picture of the long con.
Which is where Roy’s girlfriend Myra Langtry comes in. She was the roper for a long con grifter who cracked under the pressure and is now an inmate at a laughing academe upstate. She is on the make for a new partner and has taken a shine to Roy. Furthermore, she does her best work in the nude and is hoping to rope in Roy like a new calve out on the range. Her problem is the competition in the form of Lilly.
She has just returned to her son’s life, and Roy shows an Oedipal weakness for dear old mom. A kink Lilly is happy to exploit when she finds it to her advantage. Myra is dumb but ain’t so dumb as to let Roy’s weakness interfere with her plans to get to the big time, so labors to queer the deal Lilly has with Bobo and him with his unforgiving nature.
As Lilly, Anjelica Huston is a cyclone of controlled sexuality, far outdistancing Myra’s nude temptations. Lilly never needs to disrobe. Roy’s hubris is that he believes himself to be in control, set as he is between the two competing sexpots. That is his tragic flaw.
Lilly is a survivor, that is hers.
The Grifters is a crime story with no detective to sort out the cues and follow the suspects. No wisecracking social commentary, but a crime story of people living outside the law. Elmer Bernstein’s hard hitting score keeps up the pressure.
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