Argentinian writer-director Fabián Bielinsky's directorial debut, Nine Queens, almost seems like he's channeling Alfred Hitchcock through David Mamet.  Coming on the heels of The Score and Mamet's slightly disappointing Heist, the last thing moviegoers might want to pony up for is another film about conniving men and their intricate confidence games, but Queens is superior to both of those pictures.  It might be easy to see through the scams and figure out who is playing whom, but Bielinsky's execution is nearly flawless, whereas The Score was riddled with clichés and an occasional plot hole, and Heist was always more about Mamet's carefully choreographed wordplay than its numerous cons.

I've always had a soft spot in my heart for entertainment that basically teaches you how to pull off swindles of both minor and major proportions, whether it's done dramatically (like The Grifters and the stellar first act of Hard Eight) or via comedy (as in that great Jim Varney-voiced episode of The Simpsons), and Queens does nothing but solidify my predilection for the genre. Something about honor among thieves gets me all geeked up far more than any multi-million-dollar special effects or overpaid, undertalented, self-absorbed thespian.  But I digress...

Queens is set in Buenos Aires and opens with twenty-something Juan (Gastón Pauls) trying to do that thing where you trick a cashier by asking them to break a large bill and then relentlessly confuse them until you walk away with a lot more money than you're supposed to have.  But he gets caught, and during the ensuing commotion an off-duty cop intercedes and drags Juan out of the convenience store.

The cop, as it turns out, isn't really a cop at all but another grifter named Marcos (Ricardo Darín) who overheard Juan's attempt at deception.  Marcos – a little bit older, wiser and slicker – asks Juan to be his partner because his last cohort has vanished.  Juan reluctantly agrees to partner for just a day, and the two hit the town for a series of quick jobs that show off each other's various swindling strengths.

The ante is upped when Marcos finally hears from his old partner, who informs him of the opportunity for a major scam before suffering a serious stroke.  It seems a wealthy Venezuelan (Ignasi Abadal) with a sizable stamp collection is in town, and Juan and Marcos have the opportunity to sell him expertly forged copies of nine extremely rare German Weimar Republic stamps (hence the title).  The mark happens to be staying in a hotel managed by Marcos' curvy sister Valeria (Leticia Brédice), who helps set up the big con.

We slowly begin to pick up background information on the two main characters as Queens unfolds.  Juan's father, who schooled him in Con 101, is in the pokey and desperately wants his apple to fall as far from the tree as possible.  Marcos, on the other hand, is crooked enough to scam Valeria and his little brother out of their share of a dead grandmother's inheritance.

I don't know how competitive the Argentinian Film Critics Association Awards are, but Queens swept through them like nobody's business (it won seven of the ten awards for which it was nominated).  Some people might grumble about this film's similarities to any number of movies, especially Mamet's House of Games, but so what?  Would you rather see an homage to something great like Games or a remake of Planet of the Apes?

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