The world is a harsh, unforgiving place in The Grifters; few movies capture characters so cruel or unforgivable. From a screenplay written by Donald E. Westlake — based on the novel by Jim Thompson — and directed by Stephen Frears, the neo-noir thriller starred Anjelica Huston, John Cusack, and Annette Bening. Upon release, the movie instantly made an impact with its dark themes, winning numerous accolades, including a spot among the National Board of Review’s top films of 1990, and several Academy Award nominations. It’s a haunting exploration of greed, betrayal, and murder in a world of crooks and cons.

The ’90s entertainment landscape saw a resurgence of thrillers and neo-noirs, with the genre dominating the box office. Dark murder mysteries like David Fincher’s Se7en and Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs gained significant attention, while neo-noir crime thrillers like The Talented Mr. Ripley offered gripping stories of deception. But before The Talented Mr. Ripley became one of the most notable films of the decade, The Grifters delivered one of the best entries in the genre. An independent film with a difficult subject matter, it didn’t achieve the same level of mainstream success, but it still left as big of an impact on those who saw it. Now that it’s on Paramount+, it’s high time it’s revisited and celebrated for the mean, beautiful monster that it is.

What Is ‘The Grifters’ About?
image via Miramax

John Cusack stars as Roy Dillon, a blossoming con artist who is in over his head, and who’s fragile ego gets in the way of getting out of the game. Working cheap grifts in Los Angeles, he’s seeing fellow con woman, Myra (Anette Benning), who uses her sexuality and allure to get what she wants, and is using Roy for her latest con. When Roy’s estranged mother, Lilly (Anjelica Houston), returns to town after eight years, she sets up a chain of events that devolves into violence, murder, and theft.

It’s clear from their first meeting when Lilly arrives that Roy and his mother have a complicated past, as she had him at age 14. However, their history is also implied to be sinister and inappropriate. A toxic, strange love triangle then forms between Lilly, Roy, and Myra, as both women try to con him into getting what they want and use seduction as a means to get it. Lilly works as a swindler for a sadistic mob bookie, Bobo Justus, and has landed herself in serious trouble. She returns to town under the false pretense of reconnecting with Roy, but her true motive is to get her hands on the money she desperately needs. As Roy is happy with being just a small-time crook, both women run their own opposing cons on him, leading to a massive conflict.

Anjelica Huston Delivers a Chilling Performance in ‘The Grifters’

Lilly Dillon may be the darkest role Anjelica Huston has ever played. She’s a femme fatale, a wise guy in her own right, and a mother all at once. She’s a chameleon who can never be fully known. Going through a major transformation for the role, Huston traded in her trademark black locks for a shocking wave of platinum blonde hair and bleached eyebrows. It’s a chilling presentation that adds to her icy demeanor. Lilly Dillon makes Roy Dillon look tame in his cons, and Houston struts across the screen in every scene owning her compelling and gripping presence. The crux of her performance, though, lies in her layered and nuanced portrayal of a terrible mother to Roy. Huston and Cusack created a profound, unsettling chemistry that helped make the film the mean noir that it is.

Director Frears expertly lays out the messy relationship Lilly and Roy have from the start. Their strange and cold first on-screen encounter in Roy’s small apartment is telling; to start with, he calls her Lilly, not mom. The physical tension between the two is palpable as they stand as far away from each other as possible. Lilly is already like a hunter stalking her prey, and screams bad news. When she then greets him with a kiss, it’s clear that Lilly has used her sexuality to control Roy his whole life. This foreshadows her manipulative behavior to come. Roy and Lilly are only fourteen years apart, and Myra begins to catch on to the psychosexual tension between the mother and son, and uses it to her advantage to create a toxic love triangle to torment Roy.

‘The Grifters’ Gave Annette Bening Her Breakout Role and Established Her as a Sex Symbol
Image via Miramax Films

Annette Bening took the world by storm in The Grifters, and completed the unhealthy, obsessive love triangle between Lilly and Roy. She donned a Marilyn Monroe-inspired baby voice as Myra, also sporting blonde locks and a ’50s-inspired wardrobe, from headscarves to pencil skirts, to elicit even more memories of the former sex symbol. The Grifters became controversial for its time as Bening appeared nude in several scenes, with her main identity solely tied to being a vixen that seduced men. Frears and the costume department hit it out of the park by having Myra share such a shockingly similar aesthetic to Lilly, with her blonde curly hair, cat eye sunglasses, and tightly tailored suits. It symbolizes the tricky situation Roy finds himself in between the two women, and Bening expertly plays a snake in the grass who poses as an innocent victim.

The film served as Bening’s breakout role, and she was nominated for her first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, though she lost to Whoopi Goldberg for her performance in Ghost. The most electric scenes in the film are shared between Huston and Bening, as they compete to control Roy. A notable scene shows the pair fighting over him as though he were a toy, while he lay sick in the hospital. Lilly is practically looking at a reflection of herself from 15 years earlier, when she was a rising con artist. Frears smartly films them in similar close-ups — smoking cigarettes and riding the elevator in Roy’s apartment — focusing in on their strikingly similar silhouettes. Both women are portrayed as cold, calculating femme fatales, vying for dominance as Roy becomes increasingly skilled at his grift.

‘The Grifters’ Is the Most Stylish Thriller of the 90s, And is Now Streaming
Image via Miramax Films

Martin Scorsese produced The Grifters, and his expert touch on the film is undeniable. He left his mark with the film’s menacing, close-quartered shots of smokey bars, dramatic lighting in hotel rooms, and scary mobsters hunting Lilly down. But mostly his mark is left through the film’s abrupt and frank violence, from Lilly’s run-ins with the brutal bookie, to the film’s explosive third act. Cusack is also a whole style icon in the film, with greased-up hair like Danny Zuko’s, and sharp black suits that help showcase his evolution as a criminal. Frears creates a claustrophobic, unsettling atmosphere with cigarette smoke and touches of bright red in Myra and Lilly’s costumes against the gray mundanity of Roy’s life. This clever use of color hints at the impending bloodshed. While they add vibrancy to his life, it comes at a steep cost, and even Roy’s own cunning cannot match theirs.

The most sleek and iconic scene in the film showcases Cusack executing a con with impressive skill, as if he were a seasoned con artist himself. Cusack oozes charisma and charm as Roy, delivering a standout con in one of his early scenes. This excellent introduction highlights Roy’s honed skills and his deceptive ability to blend in. He then performs a dime trick to con a nearby patron, setting the tone for the film, which centers on deceit rather than honesty.

The ’90s was a time for cynicism and dark endings, and the boom of neo-noirs was coming to an end. Huston truly created a monster out of Lilly Dillon, and is completely unshakable as the end credits begin to roll. Her beauty and brutality through her elegant outfits, red lips, and cruel ways of withholding love from her son to get what she wants, is what makes the film the beast it is. Huston rightly received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress, but lost to Kathy Bates for Misery, who ironically played another one of the most evil women to grace the screen. Though The Grifters is a hard watch, it’s riveting and rewarding in its payoff in classic noir fashion. Arguably having the most upsetting, heartbreaking end to any noir, The Grifters has cemented its status as one of the ’90s best, thanks to a complex, unforgettable trio of narcissists, all vying for a treasure they don’t deserve.

The Grifters is currently available to stream on Paramount+ in the U.S.

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