MovieChat Forums > The Grifters (1991) Discussion > What am I missing???

What am I missing???

posted 19 years ago by true-canucker
18 replies | jump to latest

I think Cusack is awesome and I watch as many of his flicks as I can, I don't really follow Annette Benning at all, and Angelica Huston is a sloid actress but I watched this movie thinking it would be awesome. It wasn't, for me at least. I was into it for the first three quarters, then the ending happened, and the whole hour plus of time I had spent watching was wasted. The ending seemed terrible. I just need to know if I a missing something intellectually, or was this movie just really messed up and for a certain type of audience. A 7 on IMDB is a good grade, so many people obviously disagree with me, but this movie just didn't work for me. It's not that I don't like dark films, in fact, they are my favorite type of film, but this one...... I just don't know what the hell happened, a promising start, only to completely suck, similar to Under Suspicion with Freeman and Hackman, that movie also blew.

Please reply, if you share my point of view, thats solid, if I am missing something tell me because I am really pissed that I watched this.

[–] justjake45 19 years ago

i was let down...and as for everyone complimenting hustons acting in it, i didnt care for it, and almost every movie ive seen her in has sucked, but in this one, with her little studdering thing while talking to bobo...that was horrid. the movie as a whole was just...unfulfilling

[–] irvthom1-1 19 years ago

I didn't like it either. There were several gaps in it, it seemed to me; unsupported character shifts, like Cusack's sudden turn toward Huston without any real sense of causation, as though something was cut from the film. But more than that, I just thought the conclusion left it hanging. Besides which, it left ME unfulfilled, for the two hours of watching. I like my films to either tell me something about life or the world, or give me something to think about, and this one did neither. It was just an ugly 'noir lookalike'.

[–] 19 years ago

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[–] melkdw 19 years ago

I'm with you. When you see a movie about grifters, you assume they will be clever people, otherwise they wouldn't have survived ten minutes. None of these people were clever. Survivers, perhaps, but clever, no.

No clever cons, just a mom who cares more about her own life than her son's. A waste of great acting, great directing, great cinema but a waste nonetheless.

I loved "BLOOD SIMPLE" which was dark and smart.

[–] Nikon11 19 years ago

It wasn't really supposed to be about the cons.

It was a story about relationships - love, trust, betrayal, and survival. They were conning each other, and themselves.

[–] lilithroseleed 19 years ago

You are missing the hour+ we all put into this movie. I have no idea why this movie has a 7. A yappy, whorey, naked Benning- Cusack at his worst-kissing his mom--- oh god please somebody, anybody re-shoot that scene. Maybe it had a theme about young mothers and how it F's them up but I think this movie sucked.

[–] Nikon11 18 years ago

Hey, it's not for everyone. But I thought that Bening and Cusack were excellent. And Bening didn't look too bad either.

[–] chriskonieczki 18 years ago

Being a huge movie fan, john cusack fan, annette benning fan, and anjelica huston fan I can say with absolute certainty that I was completely bored and very dissapointed and I have now watched it 3 times all with seperate people who felt the same.My biggest question... where is the CON?

SPOILERS****
It just reviews old cons they have done if you watch one of the first scenes you see her (lilly) picking up tickets off the table and then send them to bobo you know shes is stealing no big surprise later. Then the young girl tries to take all of lilly's money while reviewing her old cons of the past. Then lilly wants her son money and takes it after an accident, followed by a weird ending.

If you have ever seen movies like CONFIDENCE or THE PRIME GIG or MATCHSTICK MEN or THE STING or CRIMINAL or even to a extent THE ITALIAN JOB they all have much better twist and much more likeable and seemingly smarter charters than those found in this dreary bunch. Not to say their performances were bad but that was the mood of the film in general with very few laughs and agin very few cons if any which you can and will find in multitudes in those movies listed above.

[–] Nikon11 18 years ago

I find this movie to be realistic, and yes, depressing. I believe that it could happen, and that there are people exactly like this - living dreary pathetic lives - with few laughs.

The Sting is a great movie, but hardly realistic. It's an enjoyable fantasy.

Matchstick Men and Criminal had the worst, most un-believable twists. The twists actually ruin them.

[–] mynamesdignan 18 years ago

This movie isn't about any one particular job which is one of its endearing qualities. You aren't spending time waiting and watching for it. Instead you are supposed to be spendning time watching them circle each other. How they feel one another out rehashing thier old jobs as kind of a resume of sorts tells you about the type of personality they possess and how it helps them acheive their final goal, a succesful score.

We find out early on that Lily has no qualms about conning anyone for just about anything she can get because she knows her days in the game are numbered. We figure out that Roy should never have been on the grift in the first place because he never had the vision to pull off anything bigger than what gets him from a to b although he is definitly smart in that world as he saves his scratch as opposed to spending it indiscrimantly.

Annette's character is shown to possess only the most basic of feminine wiles and that she has a hard time surviving in the world without a dominant male figure that she can ultimatly manipulate.

If you watched this movie looking for a caper you got the wrong movie

"I am Queens Blvd."

[–] eliostar1 18 years ago

What puzzled me was the way they kept suggesting how young and pretty Houston was, she looked old to me, and not that pretty either.

[–] Nikon11 18 years ago

Me too.

[–] 18 years ago

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[–] murry-4 17 years ago

It's not about the con. It's not a heist movie. It's a movie about complicated relationships set within the lifestyle of con-artists. The CON you're looking for is totally secondary, and therefore it was unnecessary. You can't compare it to Matchstick Men or The Italian Job.

If you're going to compare it to something, do what someone else said, and compare it to Chinatown.

[–] 17 years ago

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[–] rickmeister95 17 years ago

Thank you, murry-4...
Alongside mynamesdignan, you GET IT!

Sometimes, this board does get some intelligent posters.

[–] timlin-4 13 years ago

Whatever it's about, the writing is boring, the acting stiff, the women gross, the plot pointless. Complete waste of time, though I liked it when Cusack stole that dude's quarters

[–] 13 years ago

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