"Nine Queens"
"Who isn't a thief?" is the question asked in the story of two small-time swindlers, Juan (Gaston Pauls) and Marcos (Ricardo Darin), whose paths collide in a convenience store and quickly leads to a half-million dollar forgery scam on a big time gangster about to be deported in "Nine Queens."
"Nine Queens" is a neatly handled who's-doing-whom story that holds strong ties to such grifter films as "The Sting" and David Mamet's "House of Games." But, this Argentine crime thriller is long on dialogue and short on action. Things begin slowly and steadily as Juan pulls a bill changing scam at a local convenience store. He gets greedy as he watches the shift change and decides to double dip and pull the same scam again, minutes later. He is caught at his ploy and, suddenly, a plainclothes cop is hustling him out of the store, arrested for his crime.
But, things are not what they seem and the "cop" turns out to be a fellow conman, Marcos, who propositions the young scam artist to team up and make some real money. Juan reluctantly agrees and Marcos introduces a plan to con a big time hood who is only hours away from being deported. Marcos knows a guy, an old time forger, Sandler (Oscar Nunez), who has in his possession a set of counterfeit stamps called the Nine Queens. The duplicates are so good that only close scrutiny would reveal them as fakes. This fact, and because the gangster, Vidal Gandolfo (Ignasi Abadal), is about to be shipped out of Argentina, cause Marcos to bring Juan in on the scam that could net them a cool half million dollars.
This is where "Nine Queens" gets a bit too full of itself, as the story becomes a swirl of characters brought in to twist the plot around. It is a question of who is scamming whom as Juan and Marcos run into a myriad cast of characters who have their hands in the con game. Marcos's sister Valeria is the beautiful assistant manager at the hotel housing Vidal. She has a bone to pick with her brother and threatens his arrest if he brings his thieving ways into her hotel. It turns out that Marcos stiffed his own sister and younger brother, Federico (Tomas Fonzi), from an inheritance. Valeria will help her wayward brother if he'll fess up his scheme to Federico. All sorts of other colorful characters are brought in to help with the con.
"Nine Queens" becomes a shell game that requires close attention to figure out who is screwing whom. This is the major problem with the story as, if you stop paying attention for a moment, you lose the thread of what's going on. Characters are brought in to the story to propel things along and statements about Argentine society - who isn't a thief in that country - are made repeatedly. By the end of the film, as things wrap up neatly, I was glad that everything gets explained.
First-time helmer/scribe Fabian Bielinsky does a fair job in creating a Mamet-like whirl of characters and cons as the swindlers, Juan and Marcos, ply their trade on their unsuspecting victims. As the plot thickens, the duo tests each other's ability in their scamming game. Juan is reluctant at first to team with the unknown Marcos, but the promise of a big killing for a day's work is too much to resist. The trouble is, you know that someone is conning someone and I got mired in trying to unravel the plot. A more astute script or director may have made this a less hectic tale. Instead, "Nine Queens" is a benign story of a sting operation that moves along at a good clip and ties it all up in its "surprise" ending - although I was little surprised at the conclusion.
Techs are first class with lensing by Marcelo Camorino a definite plus. The images are crisp and clear with enough camera movement to keep things visually interesting. The fast-paced editing, by Sergio Zottola, adds to the energy behind the camera.
There is imagination and intelligence buried in this swirling conman's tale. With a bit of seasoning, Fabian Bielinsky may someday be Argentina's answer to David Mamet, but not quite yet. I give it a B-.
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