Movie · 1990 · Crime, Drama · 1h 50m · R · English
Curator score: 6.0/10 (59.9K ratings)
Seduction. Betrayal. Murder. Who’s conning who?
Overview
A small-time conman has his loyalties torn between his estranged mother and his new girlfriend, both of whom are high-stakes grifters with their own angles to play.
Ratings
Curator score: 6.0/10
IMDb: 6.8/10
Letterboxd: 3.42/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 92%
Metacritic: 86
TMDB: 6.5/10
Director
Stephen Frears
Production
Cineplex-Odeon Films
Cast
Anjelica Huston, John Cusack, Annette Bening, Jan Munroe, Robert Weems, Stephen Tobolowsky, Jimmy Noonan, Richard Holden, Henry Jones, Michael Laskin, Eddie Jones, Sandy Baron, Lou Hancock, Gailard Sartain, Noelle Harling, Ivette Soler, Pat Hingle, Paul Adelstein, Jeremy Piven, Gregory Sporleder
Curator Review
Verdict
A sharp, sleazy neo-noir with strong performances and a nasty emotional core. It’s less about the mechanics of cons than the damage con artists do to one another, which gives it a bleak, memorable edge.
Best for
neo-noir fans
viewers who like morally rotten characters
fans of actor-driven crime dramas
people who enjoy bleak, twisty family dysfunction
Skip if
you want a slick, energetic caper movie
you need likable characters
you dislike incestuous or emotionally toxic material
you prefer crime films with clear heroes or clean resolutions
Overview
The Grifters is a dirty little masterpiece of early-90s noir, built on mistrust, appetite, and the way love can look indistinguishable from a hustle. Stephen Frears keeps the film taut and queasy, letting the sunlit Los Angeles setting make the corruption feel even more exposed. It’s a movie where every relationship is a transaction, and every transaction carries a bruise.
Worth noting
The real engine here is the trio of performances. Anjelica Huston is icy and wounded, Annette Bening is magnetic and predatory, and John Cusack gives the film its uneasy center as a man too weak to stay clean. The script is more interested in psychological rot than procedural detail, which may frustrate viewers expecting a glossy con-game showcase, but it also gives the film its menace.
Bottom line
What lingers is the atmosphere: cruel, funny in flashes, and deeply unpleasant in a way that feels intentional rather than merely grim. If you like your crime films with fatalism, sexual danger, and characters who seem doomed by their own appetites, this is an easy recommendation.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Christina (3★) · 336 likes
rip sigmund freud, you would’ve loved this one.
Iman Vellani (3★) · 281 likes
I DID NOT KNOW ANNETTE BENING WAS A BADDIE LIKE THAT!
Sam · 220 likes
Annette Bening.
Criterion · 207 likes
A dark-hearted neonoir comes to a boil under the bright Los Angeles sun, in British director Stephen Frears’s rousing adaptation of the novel by dime-store bard Jim Thompson, a film that raises pulp to the realm of existential tragedy. A possessive mother (Anjelica Huston), her cynical son (John Cusack), and his scheming, seductive girlfriend (Annette Bening) are career swindlers circling one another in an elaborate emotional confidence game that grows increasingly perverse as love and trust turn to betrayal and… more A dark-hearted neonoir comes to a boil under the bright Los Angeles sun, in British director Stephen Frears’s rousing adaptation of the novel by dime-store bard Jim Thompson, a film that raises pulp to the realm of existential tragedy. A possessive mother (Anjelica Huston), her cynical son (John Cusack), and his scheming, seductive girlfriend (Annette Bening) are career swindlers circling one another in an elaborate emotional confidence game that grows increasingly perverse as love and trust turn to betrayal and… more
Aaron (5★) · 171 likes
Part of Noir-November
“You wouldn’t do that.” “You don’t know what I’d do—you have no idea—to live.”
The word “grift” originated in the early twentieth century as an amalgam of “graft” and “drift,” a way to describe those itinerant conmen who followed the era's traveling circuses and sideshows swindling folks out of a buck or two. It’s a perfect word, really—descriptive and textured, with hints of both hard work and dishonesty, a combination of attraction and repulsion that any con… more
1987 · Crime, Thriller, Drama · 1h 42m · R · Curator 8.3/10 (25.8K ratings) · Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video, fuboTV, MGM Plus, Philo, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
A cerebral con-artist thriller that shares the same fascination with manipulation, trust, and the psychology of deception.
1998 · Crime, Drama, Thriller · 2h 1m · R · Curator 8.0/10 (147.9K ratings) · Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video, MGM Plus, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
A study in greed and self-destruction where ordinary people unravel under pressure.