Category: John Cusack

THE GRIFTERS (1990)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Stephen Frears
CAST: Anjelica Huston, John Cusack, Annette Bening, Pat Hingle, Charles Napier, J.T. Walsh
MY RATING: 9/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 91% Certified Fresh

PLOT: A small-time con man has torn loyalties between his new girlfriend and his estranged mother, a high stakes grifter working for the mob.


Imagine your favorite film noir from the 1940s and ‘50s.  The Big Heat, say, or Double Indemnity.  Now imagine someone remade it, set it in the modern world, retained most, if not all, of the hard-boiled dialogue and characters, threw in some gratuitous nudity, and added some Freudian subtext that would have made Oedipus blush.  Oh, and imagine David Mamet directed it.  Voila…you’ve got 1990’s The Grifters, directed by Stephen Frears and co-produced by none other than Martin Scorsese.  It tends to move just a tad slow at times, but all that simmering pays off in the movie’s phenomenal final reel.  I am going to have to tread carefully indeed to avoid spoiling some of the movie’s best surprises.  Here goes:

As the movie opens, we are introduced to three very different characters, at least on the surface.  Lilly (Anjelica Huston) works for the mob by visiting horse racing tracks across the country and laying pricey bets on long shots to bring the odds down just in case they pay off.  She also skims just enough off the top to stay under the radar.  Roy (John Cusack) is a young man pulling small-time cons of his own, like the one where he flashes a $20 bill at a bartender, then pays with a $10 bill instead, getting $20 worth of change at half the price.  And Myra Langtry (Annette Bening in her breakout role) is first glimpsed attempting a lame con at a jewelry shop that ends with her offering her body to the jeweler instead.  (I like the fact that nearly everyone calls her “Mrs. Langtry” even though no one seems to have laid eyes on her husband.)

Myra is Roy’s vivacious new girlfriend.  Lilly is Roy’s estranged mother; she had him when she was fourteen years old (yikes) and he left home at 17, as he puts it, “with nothing but stuff I bought and paid for myself.”  Roy values his independence above all else, maybe even more than the money he’s “earned” and stashed away behind the ugly clown paintings in his living room.  So, when Lilly unexpectedly drops by his apartment in Los Angeles (which she always pronounces “Los Ann-guh-leez”) on her way to the track at La Jolla, he lies about his livelihood.  The last thing he wants is a concerned grifter mother trying to partner up with him.  He learned that from a mentor years ago, seen in a flashback: “You take a partner, you put an apple on your head and hand the other guy a shotgun.”

Due to an injury sustained from a bartender who caught him in a grift, Roy winds up in the hospital, where Lilly meets Myra for the first time.  They are not impressed with each other; their introductory conversation is brief, but it plays like Bette Davis clashing with Joan Crawford.  We get a little more information about Myra’s situation when we see her go home to her apartment where she is met by her landlord, Joe, who demands payment on her outstanding bill.  Her response is to bat her eyes and launch into a patter of what sounds like a radio or TV commercial.  “You, too, could learn to dance!  All you need is a magic step!”  After some more back and forth, she lies down naked on her bed and offers Joe a choice: “Only one choice to a customer, the lady or the loot.  What’s it gonna be?”

What makes a scene like that sparkle, along with virtually every scene in the film, is the fierce individuality displayed by the characters.  They are each wholly original, not simply placeholders for foregone dialogue or plot developments.  In classic film noir, the lead character is usually a smart guy (or gal) who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else but gets caught off guard by his own desires.  In The Grifters, all the main characters are smart…and they stay that way the whole movie.  There is not one single plot development that evolves because anyone makes a dumb decision.  You can see that they all have a clear view of all the angles, and no one is going to make a stupid choice for the sake of the script.  I can’t tell you how rare that is.  The plot and the story unwind and are wound up like a precision watch.  By the time the credits roll, you can see exactly why each character made the decisions they did, leading them to the shocking finale in the last reel.

I really can’t say more about the plot without simply retelling scenes or giving away spoilers.  Throughout the film, Huston, Cusack, and Bening deliver performances that would be right at home in a Mamet film.  They’re allowed to show more emotion than can usually be found in Mamet (I’m thinking particularly of House of Games), but their pared-down, hard-boiled dialogue cuts to the heart of the matter without being flowery.  There’s a scene involving Lilly’s boss, Bobo, played by Pat Hingle with a flat-eyed menace that would make Sonny Corleone run for cover.  His deadpan dialogue with Lilly about oranges is one of the tensest gangland conversations I’ve ever seen, and he does it without ever raising his voice.  Brilliantly written.

If this review has been vague, it’s because I am trying to preserve the unexpected twists and turns about who’s who, and who’s hiding what, and why.  If you find yourself wondering why things are moving kind of slow in the first 30-45 minutes, just be patient and let your ears bask in the hum of the crisp dialogue; observe how each character behaves according to their character, not according to a script; and marvel how a movie set in modern day can still have dizzy dames and classy broads and world-weary heroes and not feel like a relic from the 1940s, but instead feels as fresh as a movie that was released yesterday.  The Grifters is nearly-buried treasure that deserves to be rediscovered.

SIXTEEN CANDLES

By Marc S. Sanders

John Hughes became a pop culture pioneer of the 1980s when he directed his first film, Sixteen Candles. The movie adopted a slapstick approach to teen anxiety related to love, cliques and high school popularity. Had Hughes waited much longer, it’s fair to say the picture may not have ever gotten produced. In a current age of political correctness and “Me Too” movements, Sixteen Candles is more shocking than originally intended.

There is no way this film would be made with a character like Long Duk Dung as a run-on gag Chinese foreign exchange student with a stereotypical Asian accent of mispronunciations, presumptions of mental retardation, and an accompanying “GONG” each time the film circles back to him. It is fair to say this is equivalent to when Buckwheat would wipe the sweat off his brow against a nearby wall and it would appear as ink stains in a random Our Gang/Little Rascals film. Actor Gedde Wantanabe who plays Dong has gone on record saying he was vilified for the role since the release of the film. Likely he was also quite embarrassed. I wouldn’t blame him.

Date rape is also a common element of the film. Dong is implied to be a victim by a butch high school girl. In another storyline the hot guy Jake Ryan (Michael Schoeffling), who drives a cherry red Porche, implies to the geek, Farmer Ted (Anthony Michael Hall), an offer to have his way with Jake’s intoxicated girlfriend. Freshman nerd Ted takes as much advantage of the opportunity as he can by taking photographs with the girl and then even forgetting what exactly occurred the next morning but making hopeful assumptions nevertheless, simply to bolster his reputation.

I don’t draw attention to these tropes to celebrate and guffaw though. The film continues to have a staying power with Hughes’ name labeled on the picture as well its recognition for making Molly Ringwald an ongoing cover photo for Teen Beat and Rolling Stone magazines during the MTV Generation.

Perhaps John Hughes had no idea at the time that his material would carry a shock element beyond plain silliness. I’m almost convinced of that. It’s fair to say Sixteen Candles is a byproduct of the raunchiness delivered by Animal House. I’m content with that because it is very, very funny in spite of the offending and inappropriate material.

Molly Ringwald is Samantha who is beside herself when everyone has forgotten her sixteenth birthday while gorgeous Jake seemingly doesn’t even know she exists. The family’s focus is drawn to her older sister’s upcoming nuptials the next day. It’s a lot to deal with for a high school sophomore. Ringwald embraces the frustration nicely as she doesn’t try for the comedy but often becomes the embarrassing victim of Hughes’ set ups: invasively touchy grandparents, Long Duk Dong, Farmer Ted’s obsession with her, and even giving up her underpants as a special favor. Samantha is the straight character among all the clowns in the cast, including her jerky younger brother played by Oscar nominee Justin Henry (Kramer vs Kramer). Paul Dooley, known for a career as a notable schlub, offers a nice scene or two with Ringwald as her father. John Hughes allowed himself to demonstrate how much he respects the characters he’s invented even if he spent the first two thirds of the picture humiliating them.

The transitional arc of the script almost parallels Hughes’ method of writing in his career. The comedy is sketched primarily in broad strokes. I said earlier it is rife with prejudiced humor, raunch and slapstick. That is until the end arrives with a mature, candle lit first kiss over a birthday cake accompanied by the sweet, soft melodies of the Thompson Twins. It’s adoring, sensitive, and Hughes closes the book on Sixteen Candles with the love and care he awarded most of his characters during his filmography. In one film, John Hughes approaches a level of maturity by the time the story’s end arrives.

The tenderness Hughes shows in the concluding scene of Sixteen Candles would become more evidently special in his later films like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Pretty In Pink, (not directed, only written by him), The Breakfast Club, and Planes, Trains & Automobiles.

John Hughes’ legacy is unmatched. Sixteen Candles is proof of that, and though some today would be dismissive of its ingredients, it remains a defining film of what the 1980s provided, culturally. If you grew up during the decade of excess or likely the grunge of the ‘90s, chances are you attended a sleepover with friends watching Molly Ringwald as the lovestruck, but crushed Samantha. She had to survive the most awful night of high school, coincidentally occurring on the day of her sweet sixteen, while making wonderful memories of laughter, tears, love and bonding.

NOTE: I waited to post this review for over two years until the eve of my daughter Julia’s 16th birthday. Happy Birthday Jules. I didn’t fucking forget your birthday!