Nine Queens [Region 2] | Gastón Pauls, Ricardo Darín

Nine Queens [Region 2] | Gastón Pauls, Ricardo Darín | a true gem

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Nine Queens [Regio...

	Nine Queens [Region 2] Gastón Pauls, Ricardo Darín average customer review:based on 58 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Nine Queens joins a line of sly thrillers about master-pupil con artists and games within games within games that includes The Sting, House of Games, and Heist. In the first five minutes, we watch an overt scam--a young Argentinian named Juan (Gastón Pauls) running the two-10s-for-a-5 hornswoggle on a convenience store clerk--then find that we have been tricked along with the bystanders as another brand of deception kicks in. And so it goes as Juan, with both trepidation and excitement, drifts into partnership for a day with an older, more cosmopolitan conman, Marcos (Ricardo Darín). Knocking around Buenos Aires--from gritty downtown to cozy neighborhood side streets to a swank hotel where wealth murmurs behind every door--these damnably resourceful scoundrels try not to miss a bet, including an epic swindle involving the titular "Nine Queens," a set of ultrarare stamps. Writer-director Fabián Bielinsky keeps a taut rein on everything, including his own cleverness. The end result is an entertainment as bracingly disciplined as it is ingenious. --Richard T. Jameson

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Watch it twice!

Quite simply stupendous with constant tension and superb acting. You're never quite sure where this is going, but the by the finale, you'll have learned you were wrong!

Six stars!

a true gem

This is my favorite of all times - amongst the foreign pictures :)

This Argentinian film tells the story of two swindlers who meet by pure luck, or is it really? and they set up together a scam surrounding the Nine Queens stamps.

Director Fabian Bielinsky has a passion for Wilder and Mankiewicz's films, and more precisely for their elaborate double-crossing deceits, as is obvious in this film.

The movie is a true gem that is most unfortunately forgotten because of all the blockbusters; it should definitely be on everyone's list to watch as the ending is quite surprising.

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An Argentinian Gem

If you ever need a reminder that you can make a class A film on a
shoe-string budget, rent Nueve Reinas (Nine Queens), a marvelous,
gripping, and often very funny drama about the culture of con-men and
those whom they con. I'm not sure what the budget of this film was, and
I'm sure the very professional and excellent actors and crew were
well-paid, but my point is that the story-line and direction are what
make this film, and the actors are so well-cast that it all comes off
without a hitch. Unlike some con-movies, the whole thing is believable
and I had a hard time finding holes in the plausibility post-facto.
Leticia Bredice, who played a vulnerable, sexpot-victim in _Cenizas del
Paraiso_, plays *quite* an impressively different character here.
Ricardo Darin and Gaston Pauls are fascinating and marvelous. I'll let
you decide for yourselves whether there's any transcendent message in
this film, but even without, it's some serious fun.

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Who is conning who?

Nine Queens is a pretty good Argentinean movie full of cons and twists that you are never really sure who is cunning who. Two con men partner to carry out a con that will get them a lot of money: selling a counterfeit copy of the Nine Queens Stamps. Along the way to carry their con they have to deal with conning each other, staying sharp, theft of the nine queens, people that want money to stay quiet and a sister that a bit bitter about an inheritance she was supposed to get and never received. Too bad they really need her help to carry out the con. The movie keeps you interested in what is going on and very concentrated trying to figure out who is cunning who. The movie has tons of twists, turns and cons that keep on coming to the very end.

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"The Sting" was better, but its still worth watching.

Two con-men, Marcos (Ricardo Darin), a man who is capable of ripping off his own siblings, and the younger, less hardened Juan (Gaston Pauls), meet at a gas station and decide to be partners for the day. A series of events leads to them working together to sell a set of forged postage stamps, the "nine queens" of the title, to a collector, but things become complicated when it turns out that the collector is staying at the same hotel where Marcos's sister works.

"Nine Queens" would have been a really great film if it wasn't for the fact that "The Sting" came first and "The Sting" did it better. Although the two films differ in many ways, at heart, "Nine Queens" is just a homage/rip-off of "The Sting" and just about every David Mamet film ever made. Furthermore, having seen so many of this type of film, where you expect there to be assorted "surprise" plot twists at the end, I could see the ending coming a mile off. Nevertheless, if you can put that aside, it's not a bad film. I don't think its good enough to warrant a remake (it was remade as "Criminal", starring John C. Reilly and Maggie Gyllenhaal), but I don't feel like I wasted my time by watching it either. Given the fact that this is, evidently, a low budget film, writer/director Fabian Bielinsky makes the most of what he has. There are no special effects and no big-name international actors, but the script was strong enough to hold my attention and doesn't have that annoying stagey feel that a lot of low-budget films seem to have. Based on this film, I think that Bielinsky shows a lot of promise as a filmmaker and I am interested in seeing his other movie, "The Aura". It is a terrible shame that he died at such a young age (46), having only made these two films.

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