The Con Man Cometh-David Mamet’s “The House Of Games” (1987)-A Film Review

The Con Man Cometh-David Mamet’s “The House Of Games” (1987)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell 

The House Of Games, starring Lindsay Crouse, Joe   ,directed by David Mamet

A while back in reviewing the first film of the Ocean trilogy (you know 11, 12, 13 and then they ran out of legitimate cons and so mercifully closed down the film caper) I noted something that I believe applies in duplicate to the film under review David Manet’s The House Of Games. Here is what I said there: 

“Let’s face it everybody loves a con, loves a con artist at least since old Herman Melville made a big literary deal out of such characters in his 19^th century novel The Confidence Man . Well everybody loves a con, a con artist as long as that personage is conning somebody else and not one’s good self. Better if the con is on some super-rich guy who made his dough by walking over a pile of people, hell, maybe a pile of corpses. And that latter premise is what makes George Clooney’s remake of the 1960s Frank Sinatra-led classic con story Ocean’s Eleven go the distance.”

Well we have no superrich personage here but rather a best-selling psychiatrist who specializes in addictions, Doctor Margaret Ford played by Lindsay Crouse, and we have a con that beats whatever Danny and Rusty in Ocean’s could come up with-almost.

Here’s the skinny. One of the good Doctor’s clients had a gambling addiction and was ready to commit suicide over the huge deal he owns to a gambler, Mike, played by Joe Mantegna, but she is able to dissuade him from that drastic action. She in turn goes to Mike to try to persuade him to forget the debt. To “rope” her in he makes a deal with her to play his girlfriend while playing poker against a Las Vegas big wheel. Her role is to see what quirk belies his hand. When the gambling gets going Margaret noticed the tell-tale jerk of his ring that Mike had been looking for which told him the other guy was bluffing. Mike made bets based on that quirk. And lost, lost big. Trouble was he was betting on credit. No go. The Vegas wheel wanted his dough and produced a gun. Margaret feeling responsible agreed to write a check for the money owed. Beautiful, almost. She noticed that the gun was a water pistol. No sale but she was hooked even though she was to be the victim.

Her own life is a drag despite her latest best-selling so she gravitates toward Mike and his very upfront con artist ways. Gravitates to his bed as well. The next caper is a beauty. The found money gag which has been around since Adam and Eve and the serpent gag, maybe before. She wants in on the caper at least to see the play. Mike, his roper, and the “mark” “find” a suitcase with eighty thousand big ones in it. They “squabble” over what to do with it but it winds up that the “mark” is going to take custody of the dough until the split by giving Mike a check for thirty thou (no way they were returning the dough). Like finding money, finding a real thirty thou on the ground. Except the “mark” is a cop pulling a sting operation. Mike had to kill the cop in a melee and the three have to flee with Mike implicating Margaret in the scheme to get away. Oops, they “lose” the suitcase with the dough in it in the rush to get away. The dough had been borrowed by the mob-ouch. Then Margaret offered to pay the lost dough. Bingo. Eighty large and no heavy lifting. Almost.

See something wasn’t right when Margaret saw that client of hers’ at Mike’s hang-out and so she slipped in and overheard how they had, Mike, the client, the “dead” cop and the roper, pulled this bigger caper on her. Well she had played with fire so she should have expected to get burned. She had a better idea though. Pretending she thought they were still on the lam she told Mike that she had been freaked out by the caper and had taken all her money out of the bank and they should go away together. That dough was catnip to Mike but in a final confrontation once Mike knew she knew about the scam that had been pulled on her she wanted him to repent. No go. A con is a con and that was that. She killed Mike on the spot without remorse. Sorry.

Like I said everybody likes a con as long as it is not directed against them. Ask Mike if you don’t believe me.