manipulation

Third in the summer’s John Cusack rotation, and the first where he’s actively running the con rather than absorbing someone else’s. Nick Easter arrives with the whole thing planned, and the fun is watching him work rather than watching him decide.

Which makes him the odd one out. David Shayne in Bullets Over Broadway trades his principles away a concession at a time. Buck Weaver in Eight Men Out is ruined for a compromise he never actually made, done for standing in the room. Even Martin Blank, who at least chose his profession, spends Grosse Pointe Blank trying to reverse out of it. (Incidentally: one of my favourite films. Cannot wait to rewatch it.) Here, Easter is the one who got there first, and knew what he was doing when he did.

The film belongs to the excellent Hackman. Rankin Fitch (a name that simply screams “Grisham adaptation”) with his wall of monitors is doing what Cusack usually does: playing it straight while everything around him gets sillier. And, of course, the plot gets sillier by the minute.

Hoffman, sharing a screen with Hackman for the first time in their careers, is somehow given nothing to do. I’ve seen this film before but had very little memory of it, and I suspect that will be the case again should I ever press play once more.

Most of Riz Ahmed’s acting happens through his eyes—Ash barely speaks aloud, his lines passed through a telephone relay operator. That constraint sharpens everything, and it’s all gruff exchanges, mailed packages and payphone protocols. Then the ending arrives, and it crumbles. A script this fastidious about process shouldn’t ask you to swallow quite that much.

20-odd years since I last saw this and I can only watch it through two modern lenses: roguelikes and LLMs. None of us knows what happened; we’re all just dying and resetting for each new run. And Leonard’s context window is tiny; the Polaroids are his system prompt.