Nueve reinas (2000)

English title: Nine Queens

Marcos is a veteran con artist whose partner is missing. He meets a younger con artist and takes him as a partner. The two try to deceive a rich foreigner into buying a forgery of a valuable set of stamps. The foreigner is leaving the country the next day.

Entertaining criminal drama with an engaging plot and fairly well defined characters. It never really transcends the superficial level of a nicely told story, though. Don't come looking for emotional depth or philosophical insight, or you will be disappointed. The following review from an IMDB user points out some plot weaknesses:

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A great film, but a Hollywood ending
msstone96822 January 2005
Warning: Spoilers
I find it hard to believe they could have gotten a plot that grandiose off the ground in a single day, what with all the other players who were in on it. I think they changed from an otherwise flawless plot to wit......

1. In the original ending, Vidal was the one who was sold either real or fake stamps and had to pay by cashier's check due to the difficulty of arranging large amounts of cash in a single day. So Vidal was not in on it, but in fact the source of a lot more than Marcos's $200,000. I can get along with the notion of having to pay with a bank check and also that both Juan and Marcos probably keep all their assets in easily accessible cash, explaining how the sale could go ahead in a day. Sandler's sister was not in on it either -- and her scene was great either way.

2. That they probably had an ending in which both Juan and Marcos were planning to con each other out of the entire amount, but before receiving the cash, the bank had failed, thereby leaving them both in an unhappy ending that nevertheless had a twist -- that the con was real and successful, but they lost the money due to unforeseen circumstances.

The movie allowed me to suspend my disbelief right up to the ending - either one or the other was setting it up, but there remained the possibility that they were both having an extraordinary day and opportunity and just couldn't walk away in spite of all the red flags. But an unhappy ending is usually too somber for the people charged with trying to sell films to handle, so they probably re-wrote or re-shot the final scene, which encompasses almost all of the film's implausibilities, to wit....

+ about 10 people seem to be happy to share Marcos's measly $200,000 among themselves, as if this was a con not to make any money, but to "win one for the team."

+ Valeria is happy to share out most of the money she was suing Marcos for. If she was really appalled about being conned by her own brother out of the inheritance, would she then get involved with several experienced con-artists just to get him to lose her money to them?

+ Would they have been able in one day to fake a news article about a high-profile guy being deported in a high-profile way the next day? Or are we supposed to believe that someone was able to check into the hotel, impersonating Vidal all the way up to the moment he surrenders to the authorities? No, sorry, I think Vidal was originally a real buyer, not in on the con. I also don't think they originally had that "polvo" stuff about Marcos's sister (would you send your sister with the real stamps into his room and wait for your money all night? Not even if it was a legitimate sale and you were totally naive would you or anyone else do that, much less so a cynical con-man.)

The movie's got all the stuff you want to enjoy the ride: characters, slang dialog, action, Buenos Aires, right up to that last quarter hour: Cut off that ending, leave most of the supporting actors out of the main con, and put in another 10 min in which each of Juan and Marcos tries a last minute and unsuccessful scam on the other, only to soon find that they'll never cash the check, and you've got the original story.

But instead we got a really "cute" skin-grafted-on ending where the proper birthright is restored (literally), the "guy gets the girl" and viewers get a feel-good distinction between good and evil: the "good" con-artists restore cosmic harmony and triumph over the "evil" one who has crossed some kind of moral line and brought disrepute to their profession.

Another great idea crashes on the rocks of the banal ending.
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I agree with all of msstone's considerations (here's the link to that review)

Rating: 60