Nine Queens (***)
review by Jon Waterman

After a chance meeting, Marcos the old pro and Juan the charming young newbie come together to work for the day. The two conmen start off slow, but then get a call to pull a major deal. They combine forces and techniques to try to sell a forged set of valuable stamps called “Nine Queens” to a wealthy collector. Soon, what should have turned out to be a simple deal increasingly becomes more complex as the time to execute the sale dwindles.

Written by Fabián Bielinsky (also his directorial debut), this Argentinean film shows a clever structure. Just when you think the story has nowhere to go or is in danger of slowing down to a tortoise’s pace, a new obstacle comes along. The conflicts presented, for the most part, avoid clichés. It’s pretty rare to find a movie where one of the problems conmen come across is having to sell his sisters body in order to sell a sheet of stamps.

Despite the unforeseen twists, there are some more predictable moves that come along with this type of movie. There’s always the issue of are they just trying to con each other. For the longest time, it seemed as though this were not the case. I would have preferred it to stay that way. All these con guy movies think they’re so clever when it’s about the conman getting conned, when really it’s just repeating everything the genre has already produced. Is this film different? Yes. Because it avoids that for a long time and the ending truly is unpredictable. I thoroughly enjoyed the way this film came together. Very smart.

I have a little bit of a problem in the writing in that it tries too hard to be funny sometimes. It’s ok to want to put a few jokes in, but it doesn’t have to be a laugh fest. Concentrate on the strengths, because the humor was predictable. Luckily, this doesn’t detract from the picture or the enjoyment.

The acting is pretty good. I don’t really have much to say about it other than each character played their part. There’s not a lot of depth to any of them, but the lines are delivered naturally and smoothly. The camera work is functional and relatively basic. It starts to get fancier near the end and although that was appreciated, it seemed out of place and inconsistent.

If you have the opportunity to see Nine Queens, then I’d say go ahead and do so, because who knows what the American version (“Criminal”) will be like. Besides, it’s a fun, solid movie from a different country and you can’t go wrong with that.

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