The Grifters

“They probably had grifter parents and grifter grandparents and someday they’ll each spawn little grifter kids.” – Miller’s Crossing (1990)

This quote always makes me think of The Grifters (1990), a film that presents a world of confidence artists – people who gain the trust of their targets only to then fleece them of something valuable. Essentially there are two kinds of people in this world: the grifters and the people they con. The film takes it one step further and has the grifters con each other but muddies the waters with notions of family and love. Who can you trust? The answer is simple and yet hard-earned: no one.
 
Roy Dillon (John Cusack) is a small-time operator working the short con, scamming bartenders and hapless patrons out of chump change. His estranged mother Lilly (Anjelica Huston) is a mid-level grifter, working for a powerful mobster (Pat Hingle) at race tracks, betting on certain horses to lower the odds. Roy’s girlfriend Myra (Annette Bening) is a high-end grifter who works the long con – ambitious schemes that swindle wealthy marks. All three have their established methods that work for them except when they don’t as evident when Roy tries to scam a savvy bartender who proceeds to hit him so hard with a club that he suffers serious internal injuries.

When Myra can’t get what she wants from a local jeweler (Steve Tobolowsky) she attempts to use her feminine wiles with no success. When Lilly fails to lower the odds more than she should have, her boss punishes her by stubbing out a lit cigar on her hand in an ugly display of power. Their lives all get complicated when Lilly decides to visit her son while on business in Los Angeles. There’s visible tension between them that goes way back. When Myra finds out that Lilly is a fellow grifter she sets her sights on the elder Dillon unbeknownst to Roy who is unaware that his girlfriend is in the game.
 

For years John Cusack had done a series of successful teen comedies and by 1988 was looking for more mature roles in films made by auteurs like Roland Joffe (Fat Man and Little Boy), John Sayles (Eight Men Out) and with The Grifters, British director Stephen Frears. Back then there was an innate likability to Cusack that audiences identified with but on this film, he dials it back in a much more controlled performance as a grifter that thinks he’s in control and can walk away from the life whenever he wants only to find out it’s not that easy.
 
Annette Bening plays Myra like a vivacious sex kitten who knows how to use her body to get what she wants but under the façade is a ruthless professional con artist. The flashback scene where we see her in action with her ex-partner (a superbly cast J.T. Walsh) as they play their target (Charles Napier) is a wonder to behold as they expertly massage their mark to pull off a sizable payday.
 
It is Anjelica Huston that is the film’s M.V.P. as the veteran grifter that has been in the game long enough to know her limitations. Lilly spots Myra right away and the scenes between Huston and Bening crackle with playful intensity as they trade verbal barbs. Huston also shows why Lilly has survived for this long, whether it’s how she deals with her ruthless boss or a creep hitting on her at a diner. Yet for all her cold logic, she shows a vulnerable side when it comes to Roy as her long-buried maternal instincts surface and she finds herself wanting to reconnect with him. Huston does an excellent job of showing both sides of Lilly and how, ultimately, she’ll do anything to survive.

Director Stephen Frears gives the film a timeless look. Even though it is set in 1990, it could easily be the 1940s as all three main characters do not wear any trendy clothing that would date them instantly. Even the dialogue treads the line between classic grifter lingo and contemporary speak courtesy of legendary crime writer Donald E. Westlake (The Hunter), who does a brilliant job of adapting Jim Thompson’s 1963 novel. He populates the film with snappy dialogue, such as Lilly and Myra’s first meeting when the latter says, “I’m Roy’s friend,” to which the former responds, “Yes, I imagine you’re lots of people’s friends.” He immediately establishes an antagonistic relationship between the two characters that starts off as playful verbal sparring but escalates when Myra finds out that Lilly is also a grifter.
 
The entire film has a low-key classic feel to it with wonderful bits of detail, like the old school switchboard in Ray’s building. This also applies to the minor yet colorful characters that are sprinkled throughout The Grifters, such as the annoying older man (Henry Jones) who works the front desk of Roy’s apartment building. Every time someone comes in we are subjected to his personal philosophy on women, how to properly fold a towel and so on. There’s also the scene where we get Roy’s backstory on how he became a con artist when he meets a veteran grifter (the wonderfully cast Eddie Jones) who teaches him the nuts and bolts of the business: “But to take another pro, even your partner, who knows you and has his eye on you, that’s a score.” This key line of dialogue could be the film’s thesis.
 
Filmmaker Martin Scorsese wanted to know what was the best crime novel that had not been made into a film and was told it was The Grifters by Jim Thompson. He and executive producer Barbara De Fina were given a spec screenplay by Robert A. Harris and another man. Scorsese was too busy and called British filmmaker Stephen Frears in 1987. He asked if he had heard of the novel. Scorsese was a fan of the latter’s My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) and felt that Frears was the right person to direct The Grifters as he felt that he had an affinity for unusual characters. Frears read the novel and agreed to direct.
 

The screenplay was initially developed at Disney where Scorsese had a deal and Donald E. Westlake went to work adapting the novel but the studio eventually decided not to back it. Originally, Westlake didn’t want the job but Frears told him the think about it terms of Lilly’s story as opposed to Roy’s and the writer agreed to do it. Cineplex Odeon agreed to finance the film but over the course of the production the budget gradually shrunk as the backers were going bankrupt.
 
Originally, Melanie Griffith was cast as Lilly, Geena Davis as Myra and Cusack as Roy, who had read the novel in 1985 and was so taken with it that he had wanted to make it into a film himself. Frears had also briefly considered Robert Downey Jr. and Tim Robbins for Roy but when Cusack heard that Scorsese and Frears were attached to the project, he active pursued the role and got it. Anjelica Huston was cast towards the end of pre-production, just beating out Sissy Spacek. She had been contacted by Frears in 1989 while making Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) but after reading the script she was unsure about the part, shocked by the scene where Lilly is beaten by her boss. Ricky Jay was hired as a consultant and helped Cusack prepare for his role by arranging for the actor to meet actual con artists. Cusack saw Roy as “a wonderfully twisted role to dive into.”
 
The Grifters received glowing reviews from most mainstream critics. Roger Ebert gave the film four out four stars and wrote, "One of the strengths of The Grifters is how everything adds up, and it all points toward the conclusion of the film, when all secrets will be revealed and all debts collected." In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby praised Anjelica Huston's performance: "Miss Huston is again spectacular. Not since The Dead has she had a role of such eerie complexity, nor given a performance that was so haunting. Though Lily is a sly, unpleasant woman, out always for the main chance, Miss Huston discovers the sadness within that comes close to true tragedy." Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman gave it a "A" rating and wrote, "It’s Anjelica Huston who gives the film its emotional gravity. There’s almost nothing likable about Lilly. She’s callused over; she perseveres, period. But Huston, looking weirdly like a drag queen in her puffy, bleached-blond hair, plays her with such indomitable negative charisma that in the end the character doesn’t win your affection so much as your respect."
 
In his review for the Washington Post, Hal Hinson wrote, "The line Westlake and Frears walk skirts the edge of parody; it's the most puckish of film noirs. Their characters are scoundrels, but they have a hipster's arrogance; they play the sucker for nobody, and the sneaky thrill here comes from watching them work the angles for the upper hand." Finally, Newsweek's David Ansen wrote, "Huston dominates the film, but Bening, an effervescent sex kitten with the soul of a snake, and Cusack, with his brittle self-protectiveness, are spectacular in their own ways. These doomed grifters deserve instant admission into the film noir pantheon."
 

When The Grifters concludes, we are left with a world of con artists that aren’t all that attractive. It can be a brutal and ugly world where people go insane, get killed on a deal gone bad, or go on the run, always looking over their shoulder. There’s a reason why Lilly has survived for this long. Years of experience of making mistakes and learning from them has toughened her up as evident from the final scene where she accidentally (or was it?) causes the demise of another character that ends the film on a decidedly dark note. The Grifters isn’t a cute, we-all-got-away-with-it ending like Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s movies, just people surviving any way they can even if it means killing in order to do it.
 
 
SOURCES
 
“Seduction, Betrayal, Murder: The Making of The Grifters.” The Grifters Blu-Ray. 441 Films and 101 Films. May 21, 2018.
 
Sharkey, Betsy. “Anjelica Huston Seeks the Soul of a Con Artist.” The New York Times. December 2, 1990.
 
“The Making of The Grifters.” The Grifters DVD. Miramax. September 24, 2002.

Van Gelder, Lawrence. “At the Movies.” The New York Times. August 31, 1990.

Open Range

Kevin Costner was already an acclaimed and popular actor when he starred in and directed Dances with Wolves (1990). The film was a critical and commercial success but he soon became too ambitious for his own good with the disastrous, high-profile one-two punch of Waterworld (1995) and The Postman (1997). The critics turned on him and they failed to connect with a mainstream audience like Dances had, prompting him to focus more on acting and be choosier with his directing gigs.

Open Range (2003) saw Costner not only return to the western genre but also to the director’s chair after six years. As he did with Dances, the filmmaker put up his own money to help make the film and adjusted his ambitions by making a straight-up crowd-pleasing story that married the entertaining thrills of a western like Tombstone (1993) with the no frills meditation on violence of Unforgiven (1992).

Four men are driving a herd of cattle through an open range in Montana, 1882. Boss Spearman (Robert Duvall) and Charley Waite (Costner) are the two veteran cowboys aided by two inexperienced young men Mose Harrison (Abraham Benrubi) and Button (Diego Luna). The film quickly establishes the dynamic between these men as they wait out an intense thunderstorm by playing cards. After the storm passes, Costner shows the men performing daily chores with little bits of business like how Charley approaches a skittish horse. Every man pulls his own weight as Mose says to Button and we see them work together to get their wagon out of the mud from the storm. Driving cattle is hard work and Costner doesn’t let us forget it. He also indulges in the romance of it with a montage of lovingly crafted shots of cattle being herded over the countryside.

On the surface, Boss is the grizzled cantankerous veteran, Charley is the ex-gunslinger with a dark past while Mose and Button are like brothers. It’s a testament to the skill of these four actors that after only spending ten minutes with their characters we are right there with them due to their camaraderie. We are invested in their story. When these men work and live off the land together like they have, a permanent bond develops between them. When this dynamic is threatened we want to see those responsible get their comeuppance.

When Mose fails to return from a supply run at a nearby town, Charley and Boss go investigate. They find out that he’s in jail after mixing it up with some local cattlemen. It sounds out of character for Mose and a conversation with Marshal Poole (James Russo) confirms that something isn’t right. Sure enough, local cattle baron Denton Baxter (Michael Gambon) chimes in. He doesn’t like free grazers like Boss and Charley because he doesn’t want the competition. He threatens them and they take the badly beaten Mose to Doc Barlow (Dean McDermott) and his beautiful assistant Sue (Annette Bening). Of course, Baxter won’t let things go and sends four masked men to intimidate them. The inevitable confrontation results in tragic consequences and the rest of Open Range plays out Charley and Boss getting revenge on Baxter and his men.

Costner expertly uses the widescreen aspect ratio right out of the gate as the title card appears over a wide vista with a cattle drive dwarfed by ominous storm clouds off in the distance. It not only gives a sense of place but also sets the mood. It is this kind of iconography that makes westerns distinctive from other genres.

One of the great pleasures of Open Range is seeing Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall share the screen together. They play well off each other with a believable short hand between their characters conveying years spent together working off the land. They get on each other’s nerves once in awhile, but they also have a great respect for one another. Over the course of the film they get moments where the two men tell each other things about themselves that they didn’t know. It gives us valuable insights into their respective characters.

Duvall’s Boss is a man who has a way with words, telling the townsfolk what Baxter and his men did to Mose and Button, or talking reassuringly to an unconscious Button. Costner’s Charley, on the other hand, is a man of few words but when he does speak he means every one of them. He’s a man who has lived a violent past and is trying to lead a better one but Baxter forces him to get in touch with his violent nature once again.

It is also refreshing to see Costner avoid casting some young, up-and-coming actor to play his romantic interest and opt instead for someone his age like Annette Bening who can more than hold her own. She doesn’t play a damsel in distress (until later) but someone who is capable of using her medical expertise to help Mose and Button after they’ve had run-ins with Baxter’s men. She’s lived life and is not afraid of Charley’s violent past because she’s seen the honorable man he is now.

Costner is a generous actor, giving Duvall and Bening plenty of screen-time and meaty speeches to show off their chops. That’s not to say he marginalizes his role in the film. Initially, Charley seems to be a man of few words but it is only because it takes him awhile to warm up to people. Around Mose, Button and especially Boss he’s not afraid to speak up and tell them what’s on his mind. It’s as if Costner is coming at the film like a fan and wanted to see a veteran actor like Duvall in another western.

Based on Lauran Paine’s 1990 novel, The Open Range Men, Open Range marked Kevin Costner’s return to the directing chair since The Postman and the first western he appeared in since Wyatt Earp (1994). At the time, it was considered a risky move for the filmmaker, which he was very much aware: “The western is a very scary thing for Hollywood, and I’m sure they’re saying, ‘Gee, if Kevin really needs a hit, what in the hell is he doing making a western?’” He and his fellow producers, Jake Eberts and David Valdes, were so committed to the project that they each put in a lot of their own money into it, much as he had done on Dances with Wolves.

They began scouting locations on March 15, 2002 in Canada when they realized it wasn’t feasible to shoot in the United States. They spent months searching the prairies until finding Nicoll Ranch at Jumping Pound Creek, the Turner Ranch and the Hughes Ranch for the cattle driving and range camp scenes. Looking for a place where the fictional frontier town would be located proved to be difficult until they finally discovered the Stoney Nakoda First Nations Reserve west of Calgary but it had no access road. Before the town could be constructed, a one-and-a-half mile dirt road had to be built across the reserve. The filmmakers spent four weeks conducting research and design in Los Angeles. The art directors and designers worked from history books and pictures by pioneer photographers like Silas Melander and Evelyn Cameron.

Putting in a significant amount of his own money allowed Costner to achieve the authenticity he desired, which included spending $2 million building a fully-functioning frontier town. Construction of the town took nine weeks with great care taken to recreate period detail. All the lumber was milled to historical period sizes and weathered for the exterior of buildings. The window glass for the town was hand blown and imported. Even the color palette that was used reflected paint sample charts from 1880. All of this attention to detail allowed Costner to film both exterior and interior shots on location.

The production encountered a few challenges. Nine weeks before principal photography began, Robert Duvall broke his ribs in a horseback-riding accident. Filming began on June 17, 2002 with a budget of $23 million. During the first few weeks, Costner’s appendix ruptured but went undiagnosed until he was rushed to the emergency room two months after the production finished.

Open Range received mixed to positive reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars and wrote, “Kevin Costner's Open Range, an imperfect but deeply involving and beautifully made Western, works primarily because it expresses the personal values of a cowboy named Boss and his employee of 10 years, Charley.” In his review for The New York Times, A.O. Scott wrote, “Mr. Duvall knows the difference between underacting and overacting, and knows when each is called for. He plays his part, a thin fantasy of crusty frontier benevolence, as if it were a mediocre poker hand, bluffing Boss into someone bigger and more exciting than he has any right to be.” The Washington Post’s Desson Howe wrote, “There's a lot in this movie, simple, big, small and exciting. It's the year's first serious contender for big prizes. What's not to like about this picture?”

Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleiberman gave the film a “B” rating and wrote, “Duvall and Costner play together like a seasoned team: They’re wary, unsentimental colleagues whose opposing rhythms — Boss is spiky and righteous, the mellow Charley is slower to anger — never undercut their silent allegiance.” In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan wrote, “Though his choice of roles has not always been wise, Costner is very much a movie star, and his reversion to an Unforgiven dark side is in many ways more believable than his fumbling courtship of the forthright Ms. Barlow.”

Costner doesn’t want to reinvent the western with Open Range. He simply wants to tell an entertaining story about hard-working men that stand up for their rights to live life on their own terms. The two-hour running time may seem indulgent to some but the film never feels too long. He lets things breathe and allows us to spend time with these characters and get to know them so we care what happens when things go south.

There’s something to be said for telling an entertaining story well. So often these days story is sacrificed for spectacle. In this respect, Open Range is a refreshing call back to classic westerns like Red River (1948) but with aspects of revisionist westerns like Unforgiven. This film is not afraid to tell a simple story where the good guys beat the bad guys and it works in part because it’s done in a sincere way.

SOURCES

Giammarco, David. “Costner’s Last Stand.” The Globe and Mail. August 9, 2003.

Kaufman, Sarah. “After Several Flops, Costner Defends Open Range as a Movie with Heart.” Washington Post. August 15, 2003.

Open Range Production Notes. Touchstone Pictures. 2003.