FilmRoar

As a fan of grifter movies (Film Roar: Grifters and Con Men), I had Nueve Reinas (2000) [Nine Queens] recommended to me as one of the great con films. I wish I could agree, but unfortunately I found Reinas to be predictable and formulaic. A good grifter story is a con; not just a story ABOUT a con, but a con itself. The con writer knows that the audience is there because they enjoy a good plot twist, a setup, a game where the pieces are all set out and the watcher is challenged to figure out what is really going on, just as the characters do the same. The script needs to be sharp enough to keep the audience engaged on more than one level, forcing the consumer to see the action from the perspective of the character being setup, the one doing the setup and the filmmaker to try and unravel the knotted stories before the movie comes to exposition and the truth is revealed.

Reinas seems to do a great job of this, setting up a plot of unlikely coincidences and intrigue that everyone knows will end with some poor sap being too greedy and loosing his shirt, but the movie commits the ultimate sin and explains away the ending with a cop-out ‘surprise ending’ that has no real foundation. Once you see a few con movies you learn that nothing is immediately what it seems, but you also learn that plot twists must have a point and a foundation, both of which are barely there in this case. I will not go into the details in case anyone who reads this wants to watch it and be surprised, but I can tell you that if you are like me at the end you will feel the urge to yell ‘where the fuck did that come from?!’ I wish I could forgive Reinas for their filmic faux-pas, I honestly thought the acting was top notch with all three leads, Gastón Pauls, Ricardo Darín and Leticia Brédice giving superb performances. The dialog provided by writer/director Fabián Bielinsky was also top grade. It is simply too bad he could not come to a neat wrap up.