Argentine filmmaker Fabian Bielinsky makes his directorial debut with this taut crime thriller about a stamp and con artists on the make. The film opens with low-rent hustler Juan (Gaston Pauls) trying to scam the workers in a convenience store when Marcos (Ricardo Darin) steps in to arrest him. In truth, Marcos is veteran con himself and the two split the money after fleeing the scene. Soon after, Marcos asks Juan to be his partner in a series of small-time jobs. When one of the men gets a
message from his sister, the two head to the tony hotel where she works. There they try to pull off a big con that was initially planned by an aging criminal too ill to do it. The swindle centers around a fantastically accurate forgery of a rare stamp called the Nine Queens. As the two doggedly try to set up the deal, mobsters and the like learn of the job and try to horn in. This film was screened at the 2001 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi
If Nine Queens draws you on a journey that eventually leads up a garden path toward your own suckerhood, it's all the more pleasurable for having done so with such slick expertise.
[Even after] the plot's spiralling, shimmering sleights of hand and its never-ending ruses and deceptions . . . the ending will still pull the rug out from under [you].
I hadn?t realised the film CRIMINAL was a re-make, of course it didn?t take me long to realise that this was the original film. I usually prefer to watch the original first, but found both equally entertaining and enjoyed both portrayals of characters in each film.
Always enjoyed the ending to this one.
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