Nine Queens
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Movie Reviews of Nine Queens
Movie Review: Who's conning who?
Summary: 5 Stars
An outstanding movie about a couple of Argentinean cons who are out to swindle everyone they encounter. The lead actors portray Juan and Marcos as a couple of loveable bad guys that will amaze you with the tricks they pull to get money. It seems everyone they encounter is going to get ripped off as they pull off some incredible and hilarious scams. They meet per chance while Juan is pulling a con and Marcos witnesses the game pulled on a gullible store clerk. Juan gets caught and Marcos acts like he is a cop/detective and hauls him away only to reveal himself as a fellow con. A friendship develops and soon they are showing each other their best tricks and plan a major scam involving a forged copy of a valuable stamp set, the nine queens. The film is brilliant, extremely well written and moves at a fast pace that keeps you guessing throughout the movie. Part of the beauty of this film is the bright script(it was a winner in a national script writting contest) that keeps you wondering what the heck is going on. To thoroughly enjoy the movie you may have to succumb to just watching rather than trying to figure it out because everything is not as it seems. There are a lot of twists and turns , cons scaming each other, new characters introduced to complicate things, eventually leading up to the finale where the quest for unloading the fake stamps reveals exactly who is conning who. If you like movies where you play mind games with the movie trying to figure it out than you will love this movie. It is a delightful , witty caper movie that is fresh and totally entertaining. Highly recommended cinema from Argentina that is equal or better than the best from Hollywood.Movie Review: Nueve Reinas
Summary: 5 Stars
Nine Queens is a heist flick, and as such is quite predictable in its unpredictability. After the first few minutes of the movie, you know something's not quite as it seems, that there's a part of the con that you're just not seeing, but that you know is there...and that's part of what's great about this movie.Set in Buenos Aires, this is the story of two con artists, Marcos, played by Ricardo Darin (Son of the bride) and Juan, played by Gastón Pauls (Nuts for Love), who decide, reluctantly, that they should work together in order to have a big hit, namely, the sale of a fake stamp collection, The Nine Queens. The acting, while not extraordinary, is successful in presenting these two criminals as they perform a variety of cons. The real gem here is the writing; witty dialogues and smart cons fill this film, more precisely when things start to go wrong at every turn for Juan and Marcos and they have to improvise for the con to work. The movie also stars Leticia Bredice as Marcos' unapproving sister.
If you're a fan of the genre, you may be able to discover the twist before the end of the movie, but still, it's a fun ride, and it's refreshingly different from other heist films (i.e. Ocean's eleven, Confidence, et al) as it presents a livelier, fresher Southamerican spirit.
As a foot note, this movie was remade in english by Steven Soderbergh's and George Clooney's production company, Section 8, which coincidentally also made Ocean's eleven and Ocean's twelve, two similarly themed films. The U.S. version stars John C. Reilly (Chicago, Boogie nights) and Diego Luna (Y tu mamá también, Havana nights).
Movie Review: The Sting set in Buenos Aires
Summary: 5 Stars
Nine Queens is a caper movie in the tradition of "The Sting" or "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels." Ricardo Darin plays a jaded con man who adopts a younger accomplice (Gaston Pauls) as a "fill in" for his missing partner. The two go off on a short series of petty cons, which ultimately lead to an opportunity to sell a counterfeit set of stamps (the Nine Queens) to a potential buyer who notionally is leaving the country and will not have time to check the authenticity of the stamps. Another leading character is the estranged sister (Graciela Tanenbaum) of the character played by Ricardo Darin who believes that Darin is cheating her and another younger brother out of their inheritance. There are numerous other characters and even the bit players lend color to this movie.
Plot twists abound in this cleverly plotted comedy thriller. To provide more detail on the plot will spoil all the fun. Suffice it to say that you will have difficulty guessing the ending. The dialog is crisp and genuinely funny and, in places, touching. The art of Darin, who often plays sensitive guys in the Argentine versions of "chic flicks") is to keep you liking him even though his actions are so consistently rotten. Pauls also plays a good character, who engages in the criminal life with arguably noble motives. No one can claim that this movie is profound, but it is really entertaining and a great introduction to Argentine cinema.
Movie Review: Too much praise for a movie that isn't overly well-known?
Summary: 5 Stars
"Nine Queens", or "Nueve Reinas" in its original Spanish title, is one of the more entertaining Argentinian movies I've watched so far. The dialogue is witty, the action doesn't stop, and the acting is flawless. Too much praise for a movie that isn't overly well-known?. Well, even good things are not widely recognized to be so sometimes, and this is one of those occasions.
The theme of the movie is not overly original: two conmen trying to pull off a scam that involves a set of stamps (the "Nine Queens"), and a lot of money. But what makes this movie interesting is how that idea is developed, managing to surprise the spectator until the very end. The director (Fabián Bielinsky) also wrote the script, that won a National Prize in Argentina.
Scam after scam, you will feel you are taking part of the many "adventures" of a very seasoned Marcos (Ricardo Darín) and an endearingly young and idealistic Juan (Gastón Pauls) in their quest to become rich, albeit for very different reasons. The question is, who is conning whom?.
All in all, I think you will thoroughly like this movie. The story and the acting are great, and so is the beautiful setting, the city of Buenos Aires. Watch it, and enjoy :)
Belen Alcat
Movie Review: The perfect con film!
Summary: 5 Stars
There's a quite a bit of surprise in the Argentine film Nine Queens, but the biggest surprise of all is how perfect it is.The film follows two grifters who stumble onto the biggest con opportunity of their lives: The selling of forged stamps worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. The only thing is who can they trust in this nest of con-men? Everything about the film is perfect, especially all the clever plot twists. But the filmmakers never get too clever, they keep everything toned down just enough to stop from being over the top, but exciting enough to never know who's conning who. It avoids predictable plot points and over emphasis on ideas that has been prominent in recent heist films such as The Score, which pushes its cleverness to much.
When I rented it, I wasn't aware of it being a foreign film (not that it would have mattered, I rent plenty of them), so I was surprised when the titles came up in Spanish (that's a fair warning for those interested). But this film, in it's theme and design, is so similar to the styles of American films that if it weren't for the foreign language, I'd never consider it foreign. This is one that definitely transcends cultures and is purely a great ride of a film that just about anyone would love. I highly recommend this film.