Fresh
Best to savor The Grifters for its handsome design -- the picture looks as clean as a Hockney landscape -- and its juicy performances.
Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine
The Grifters
Seduction. Betrayal. Murder. Who’s conning who?
1990 · 1h 50m · R
Crime, Drama
Directed by
Stephen Frears
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The Grifters
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.
Director and cast
Critics on Rotten Tomatoes
Top critics, in their words
92%
Tomatometer
Rotten
A mannerist thriller that doesn't begin to work despite the number of talented hands involved.
Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
Rotten
Cusack underplays Roy, making him an unbelievable wiseguy, a colorless cipher too akin to the saps he loves to fleece.
Variety Staff, Variety
Fresh
Donald Westlake's excellent screenplay does some justice to the starkness of Jim Thompson's novel; and Frears' direction never fails to grab the attention.
Stephen Garrett, Time Out
Fresh
The Grifters is so good that one leaves the theater on a spellbound high.
Vincent Canby, New York Times
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