| | | Seduction. Betrayal. Murder. Who's Conning Who?
Features: DVD, Aspect Ratio 1.85:1, Dolby Surround Sound
Academy Award winning actress Anjelica Huston (Best Supporting Actress, Prizzi's Honor, 1985), John Cusack (Serendipity), and Annette Bening (American Beauty) star in this acclaimed hit where seduction and betrayal could lead to murder! When small-time cheat Roy Dillon (Cusack) winds up in the hospital following an unsuccessful scam, it sets up a confrontation between his estranged mother Lilly (Huston) and sexy girlfriend Myra (Bening). Both Lilly and Myra are ruthless confidence artists playing the con game in a league far above Roy ... and always looking for their next victim! The question soon becomes who's conning who as Roy finds himself caught in a complicated web of passion and mistrust!
"...absorbing to watch." Desson Howe, The Washington Post
Editor's Note
THE GRIFTERS is an intense character study of a group of people caught up in a world where nobody can be trusted. Stephen Frears presents this cool and brutal adaptation of Jim Thompson's stylish noir novel, which centers on the complex lives of three con artists. Shady Roy Dillon (John Cusack), a low-level Los Angeles con man and petty thief, and Roy's sexy, amoral girlfriend Myra (Annette Bening), a con artist who is down on her luck and willing to do whatever it takes to get back on top of her game; are the focal point of the action. Rounding out the trio is Roy's mother, Lilly (Angelica Huston), a veteran con artist who shares little with Roy other than a bizarre oedipal attraction. The seedy underbelly of LA life is played out in evocative tableaux, as Myra and Lilly compete for Roy's attention until they ultimately drive him away.
| Features | The Grifters Scrapbook | | English Dolby Surround | | French Dolby Surround | | Commentary With Director, Screenwriter, And Actors John Cusack And Anjelica Huston | | The Making Of The Grifters | | The Jim Thompson Story |
| Technical Info
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Release Information
| | Studio: Buena Vista |
| Release Date: 9/11/2009 |
| Running Time: 119 minutes |
| Original Release Date: 1990 | | Catalog ID: 27184 | | UPC: 00786936190953 | | Number of Discs: 1 |
Audio & Video
| | Original Language: English | | Available Audio Tracks: English | | Video: Color |
Aspect Ratio | | 1.85:1 |
| Cast & Crew
| Awards |
Oscar (1991) | | | Anjelica Huston, Nominee, Best Actress | | | Annette Bening, Nominee, Best Supporting Actress | | | Stephen Frears, Nominee, Best Director | | | Donald E. Westlake, Nominee, Best Writing, Screenplay Based On Material From Another Medium | |
Golden Globe (1991) | | | Anjelica Huston, Nominee, Best Performance By An Actress In A Motion Picture-Drama |
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| | Professional Reviews | Rolling Stone
"...[Huston's] performance is as devastating as any in film..." 11/29/1990 p.117-8Entertainment Weekly
"...Stunning noir....[Cusack shows] circumspect intelligence..." -- Rating: A 10/08/1999 pp.74-5 New York Times
"...Guaranteed to take the breath away....[Few films] pack a wallop to compare with this..." -- Critic's Choice 01/25/1991 p.C13 Los Angeles Times
"...Bening and Cusack are perfection at what they are doing, she twinkly as a rhinestone, he dangerously passive....[Frears] has an entire movie in which to play with our nerves, and in a masterful display of control, he never lets up..." 12/05/1990 p.F1 Uncut
"Slick surrealism from Stephen Frears..." 08/01/2001 p.142 Total Film
4 stars out of 5 -- "[A] stylishly retro adap of one of the author's most representative works....With its coldly amoral nihilism intact." 05/01/2007 p.120 Sight and Sound
"Frears and cinematographer Oliver Stapleton make late 1980s America look as dark and moody as any city in an old film noir." 04/01/2007 p.85 Chicago Sun-Times 8 of 10
The performances are all insidiously powerful. Cusack provides a sympathetic center for the film, as a kid with a burning ambition to be good at the con game, but with no particular talent and without the ruthlessness he will need. Anjelica Huston is Academy Award material as his mother, who had this child when she was a teenager and who has never fully accepted the fact that he is her son. And Annette Bening has some of that same combination of sexiness, danger and vulnerability you could see in Gloria Grahame in movies such as The Big Heat and In a Lonely Place. - Roger Ebert
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