If you go to the 9 minute mark of the movie, where John Cusack tries to scam the bartender, you will see Reg Park playing on the bar TV in the background. They are showing HERCULES AND THE CAPTIVE WOMEN, (1961). This is the scene where the bartender hits Roy in the stomach causing all the internal damage. Larry Anderson, Canada

The Grifters will twist your head around until you're unable to tell who's conning who. The uncertainty is very entertaining and will keep you guessing until the end.However, there's a few problem with the movie. First off, the score. Instead of being invisible and underlining the visual, it can at time jar you into reality. Second, the two main actresses are inferior to what John Cusack is doing. Actually, most other actors are pretty average if not below. Third, the "mob" felt cartoony. Fourth, the blood and injuries are so fake, I think I could do better. Finally, it's old enough to look like a period piece out of the eighties, but was made to seem current. That felt odd.All in all, it's entertaining, just don't mind the odd things lying about.

An indie crime-drama fixes on a veiled Oedipus complex relationship between a mother and his son, which also involves another pivotal figure, the son's femme fatale girlfriend. One background consensus is that they are all grifters, while the mother is an old-hander, the girlfriend is a slutty self-seeker, they are pros, bar the son is just a small-time crook and being too righteous to go down with the swindle business, what's worse is that he has no sway in juggle with these two women, after the mother hoodwinks a handsome amount of cash from her ferocious boss, which ignites a series of cutthroat happenings which ends in a quite blatantly bold epilogue. The film was an Oscar dark horse in 1991, amassed 4 nominations including BEST DIRECTOR for Frears and BEST ACTRESS for Angelica Huston and BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS for Anette Bening (although I don't consider its script an ace one since there are many marked plot-holes buried inside despite of its Oscar nomination). These two ladies at the most time share an analog aspect (have been mistaken at least twice in the film), Anjelica holds a glaringly formidable aura and her and Cusack's near-incest impulse pushes the film to its culmination of wallowing in a state of indie-charisma. Bening, whose vixen seductiveness has been laid bare unreservedly, pre-empts that the future Ms. Beatty would not earn that title without any man- conquering expertise. John Cusack, top-billed in the film and delivers a marvelous performance as well, whose repeatedly undervalued acting career showed his dexterous prowness at the beginning, sadly, it never kick-started. (All the three performances and the director are among my top 10 ranking, the film barely missed my top 10 though). For director Stephen Frears, the film differs from his more prestigious works, say THE QUEEN (2006), it certainly has a more noir-ish tone in assembling the intensified thrills with an uneven script (just take one example, it never quite explained how the money being left in the car after the accident, so Lilly, Huston's character, has to steal the money from her son). But thanks to Frears, the film at the very least establishes itself as a progenitor of the crime genre in the 90s, where violence is always hidden somewhere and executed where you are unprepared.

The Grifters is an ultra slick, ultra dark Neo Noir set in an ambiguous time zone of a fifties stylised nineties. It portrays a world of con artists and narcissistic low life hell bent on unconscious tide into self annihilation. John Cusack plays Roy Dillon a Grifter who plays small time tricks with the various 'marks' who he discovers in various dives and race tracks. Psychological analysis of confidence-men says that they display an arrogance only else where displayed by psychopaths, Cusack plays this out well his ice cool facade dressed in suits that melt him amongst the crowd. Unfortunately for him (both as a character and possibly as an actor) he's got dealings with two incredibly powerful women. Being his main squeeze Myra (played by the always awesome Annette Benning) a lady whose sexual mesmerism and bimbo smokescreen conceals a razor sharp mind of chess master par excellence. Roy's mother (Angelica Huston),Lilly could be Myra's older twin, thus exploring a certain taboo subject that goes all the way back to Greek Tragedy. Stephen Frears (possibly at the height of his power) directs, so you know what your getting is quality. Adapted from a novel by Jim Thomson, a writer whom could out dark James Ellroy or any other devil dog of the hardboiled you care to fling. This is pitch black portrayal of the human heart as thrown into the molten lava consistency of hell.