Chelsea McGill Marcos, an experienced con artist, takes on the young, inexperienced Juan as an apprentice for a day. A call from Marcos's estranged sister gives them a lead to a big opportunity - a forger has created an exact duplicate of a rare set of stamps, the Nine Queens, which he was trying to sell to a stamp collecting, exiled diplomat who will leave the country the next day. When Marcos comes into possession of the stamps, he engages Juan's help to pull off the con. But as the difficulty increases and obstacles keep falling in their way, it becomes more and more difficult to determine who, exactly, is conning who.Like any great con movie, Nueve Reinas is full of deception and lies. The fun part is unraveling who is conning who, and how they are going about it. Was the whole movie one big con, or does it only seem that way to the viewer? How much was planned beforehand, laying in wait for the two main characters to arrive?Any story about lies is also intimately concerned with trust. Juan trusts Marcos to show him the ropes. Marcos' sister tries to convince their younger brother not to trust him. Juan's father trusts him to stay out of trouble and to bail him out of prison.But in this tangle of truth and lies, who is telling the truth? And what are they getting out of it?Family, friends, and lovers? One of this movie's major themes is the importance of family. As Marcos and Juan become caught up in the con of a lifetime, they are also caught up in a web of family intrigues. Marcos, we learn, has taken his sister and younger brother to court in an attempt to gain all of the family inheritance. His sister hates him. His brother still likes him, and seems to trust him despite everything. But when Marcos convinces his sister to do the unthinkable so that he, Marcos, will get money - what does family mean then? And will his brother still be able to love him? Is Marcos really worthy of love?This theme is repeated throughout the film. One of the first cons Marcos pulls is to trick an old woman into thinking that he is her nephew. Juan is trying to make money to help his dad out of prison. To Marcos, it seems that family is a malleable concept meant to be used to your advantage. And yet we see how lonely Marcos is; his one friend (on this day) seems to be Juan. He has betrayed and abandoned everyone else.Do we see a bit of repentance at the end of the movie? Perhaps. Or maybe Marcos is just sad about all the money he didn't get.

blanche-2 Nine Queens is a fantastic film out of Argentina, with a screenplay by Fabián Bielinsky, who also directs.The story concerns two men, Marcos and Juan, both low-level con men, who become partners in order to pull off a once in a lifetime swindle. They hope to sell The Nine Queens, extremely rare stamps, to a wealthy collector. The stamps are forgeries done by a very ill friend of Marcos, and if they are able to complete the transaction as the collector is about to leave town, he will not have time to go to a laboratory and discover the stamps are fake. The fakes are good enough to pass any other muster.This is a marvelous film, made with a modest budget, that is entertaining, imaginative, and very clever. It's along the lines of House of Games and The Spanish Prisoner, both written by David Mamet, who seems to have cornered the market on this kind of plot. The story here is more straightforward, more streetwise, and grittier than anything of Mamet's. Also, as good as Mamet's work in this area is, there's always a little staginess that makes one wary of a setup. There's none of that here.Highly recommended - you won't mind the subtitles.

Boba_Fett1138 This is how a crime movie should be like; great, clever, fun and original. "Nueve reinas" has all of these elements in it, making this a great movie to watch! Really, it's a movie that deserves to be seen by more but most people have most likely never even heard about this movie, since it's an Argentinian production. This shall probably also scare a whole bunch of people off already but honestly, Latin American productions are often perfectly watchable ones and besides made in pretty much the same style as Hollywood productions. In other words; perfectly accessible to watch, even for those who aren't really accustomed to watching 'foreign' movies.It luckily was a movie that earned lots of critical praise and got recognized by still many, all over the world, as a great movie. It makes at all the more a big shame that director Fabián Bielinsky died a couple of years after this movie, at a fairly young age. I'm convinced that this guy could had made many more great movies, like this one.Foremost reason why this movie works out well is because it's being a fun movie to watch. Not necessarily in a comedy way but more due to the way the story progresses and how the main characters slowly but steadily get into more and more trouble, as they try to make a big score. It often gets them in some unexpected situations and ensures that the movie makes plenty of twists and turns with its story.It's a simple movie with its setup but one that gets made slightly more complicated with developments. Not that the movie ever gets hard to follow though. Saying that it's often being clever does not mean that it's also totally going overboard with anything and the story becomes too hard or complex to follow.It has some solid characters in it as well and the movie gets mostly carried by its two main leads, played by Ricardo Darín and Gastón Pauls. All around the movie features some good performances in it, which was also necessary, since it's actually a very talkative movie as well, once you start thinking back about it. Don't let this scare you off though, since the movie is still fast paced as well and features plenty of great developments and situations in it, that will keep you interested at all times.A movie that deserves to be seen by more!8/10 http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

NICO Nueve Reinas is a phenomenal movie having to do with two Argentinean men who earn their money by conning people in shops and on the streets. The two men stumble upon each other one day and decide to work together for the rest of the day. This day turns out to be the day in which they could make the most money they have ever brought in. Whilst dealing with the reality of the dangers that exist on the streets of Argentina, the director allows the audience to see a more comedic side of things by entangling the con-men in unexpected situations. Throughout the film we meet several incredibly entertaining characters who have extremely peculiar relationships and encounters with the two con-men. The acting of all the characters, together with the circumstances they find themselves in, are great aspects which make this movie thoroughly enjoyable. Furthermore, the director includes very amusing dialogue between characters as well as adding discrete lines and comments which make it cleverly comedic. All these aspects go without mentioning the different twists and turns which can only be revealed by watching the movie itself.