The Grifters (1990) (Criterion Collection, Restaurierte Fassung, Special Edition)

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A dark-hearted neonoir comes to a boil under the bright Los Angeles sun, in British director Stephen Frears’s rousing adaptation of the novel by dime-store bard Jim Thompson, a film that raises pulp to the realm of existential tragedy. A possessive mother (Anjelica Huston), her cynical son (John Cusack), and his scheming, seductive girlfriend (Annette Bening) are career swindlers circling one another in an elaborate emotional confidence game that grows increasingly perverse as love and trust turn to betrayal and Oedipal undercurrents rise to the surface. In Frears’s first Hollywood film, the ever-assured director and his trifecta of magnetic actors conjure a moody, unstuck-in-time vision of toxic Americana.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
New 4K digital restoration, approved by director of photography Oliver Stapleton, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
Audio commentary featuring director Stephen Frears, actors John Cusack and Anjelica Huston, and screenwriter Donald E. Westlake
New interview with actor Annette Bening
Short making-of documentary featuring Cusack, Frears, Huston, Westlake, and production designer Dennis Gassner
Seduction, Betrayal, Murder: The Making of “The Grifters,” featuring interviews with Frears, Stapleton, editor Mick Audsley, executive producer Barbara De Fina, and coproducer Peggy Rajski
The Jim Thompson Story, featuring Westlake and Robert Polito, biographer of The Grifters novelist Jim Thompson
Trailer
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: An essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien

New cover by Drusilla Adeline/Sister Hyde