Anjelica Huston Campaigns For Mother-Of-The-Year In ‘The Grifters’ Reviewed

Greek tragedy has nothing on Stephen Frears’ The Grifters. Based on a Jim Thompson novel, Lilly (Anjelica Huston), Roy (John Cusack), and Myra (Annette Bening) are all con artists with varying degrees of experience. Lilly is the seasoned pro who goes to the horse races and pads the odds for a boss who’s a lot scarier than his name, Bobo (Pat Hingle), would suggest. Roy is a strictly short con player who’s doing fine for himself until his mother walks back into his life, and Myra is a woman who’s used to getting people to do what she wants, whether it’s in service of a larger scheme or so she doesn’t have to pay the rent.

They’re all brought together in a gorgeous triptych, splitscreen sequence that screenwriter Donald Westlake explains in the commentary was written into the script. Are they working on the same job? About to come together as a team? “No” is probably a fair answer to both of those questions but there are connections – dark, sleazy connections that prove why the Greek tragedy remark earlier wasn’t an exaggeration.

Usually with three leads there’s one that stands out from the rest but Huston, Cusack, and Bening all give career best performances in this movie (and, as Westlake talks about in the commentary, figuring out which character is the one viewers are supposed to be following is one of this film’s — and its twisty plot’s — many delights). The supporting cast, while small, is rich, too, elevating bit parts so that you notice the hotel concierge instead of forgetting their faces.

Richard Horning‘s costumes are exquisite. The sunglasses which Sister Hyde has now immortalized with Criterion’s cover actually didn’t make much of an impression on me (though the pulp yellow color for the cover feels extremely correct) but the way Horning chose Huston and Bening’s wardrobes to highlight the differences and similarities between their characters is perfect storytelling. There’s also a red dress that proves how sexy side boob can be and treads the line the film walks between being set in modern times but also feeling like a throwback to 1940s noir in its styling.

Most of the bonus features, besides a new interview with Bening and a pamphlet essay by Geoffrey O’Brien (in which O’Brien looks at how faithful Westlake was to Thompson’s book), are carryovers from previous physical media releases. The commentary was recorded in 2013 and while it doesn’t sound like Frears, Cusack, Huston, and Westlake were in the same room together when it was filmed (or at least not all of them were), it’s well-edited. The revelation that Frears suggested Bening check out Gloria Graeme‘s films, for instance, completely explains how Bening plays Myra, and while the decision to cut most of the flashback scenes that would’ve fleshed out Roy and Lilly’s backstories makes sense, it’s a shame they couldn’t have been preserved as deleted scenes. Luckily, across these bonus features there are lot of opportunities to hear from different collaborators, including cinematographer Oliver Stapleton in a featurette that runs over an hour long, and Thompson biographer Robert Polito, but it’s a shame Criterion couldn’t have commissioned more film historians to offer outsider perspectives.

The Grifters is available on Blu-ray and 4K from Criterion. It’s about as grimy and hardboiled as a film can get, but I mean that as a compliment.