Once Again- Everybody Loves A Con Artist-Except That One Being Conned-Kurt Russell And Matt Dillon’s “The Art of the Steal” (2013)-A Short Film Review

By Si Lannon

The Art Of The Steal, starring Kurt Russell, Matt Dillon, Terence Stamp, 2013

Two axioms. Con artists are born not made. Everybody loves a con-except the victim. I knew Eddie Daley, the legendary con artist who swindled then multimillionaire J. B. Thompson out of half a million back in the 1960s on a non-existent stock deal when that sum meant something unlike today when it is just walking around money (the scheme something out of the famous buddy film with Robert Redford and the late Paul Newman in The Sting although way before but with fewer moving parts and thus less likely to fail-another axiom but only applicable to those in the con trade and so not listed along with the two generic axioms.)  Eddie even in elementary school was on “the con” grabbling kids’ milk money on some golden goose scheme which all it did was let him grab some cool clothes with his ill-gotten proceeds, maybe sent his long list of girlfriends flowers and rings. I was one of his victims, his greedy hungry victim the only kind you want, so I know the validity of those axioms first hand.

I know too that Eddie never stopped the perpetual con until he stopped a bullet about twenty years ago long after I stopped knowing about what he was doing and his whereabouts in some kind of fucked-up mess involving one of the drug cartels down in Central America. He must have been playing with fire and must have been tasting product to even think about a scam on those guys. The thing is that what one of the guys, Captain Crunch but everybody nodded and bought into the idea in the film under review The Art of the Steal said is true-you basically have to keep going until you wind up in the history books, the con hall of fame where guys reverently write about your exploits. Or go back to selling life insurance or vacuum cleaners door to door, something like that.  Maybe that is where Eddie’s head was at when the deal went south on him.   

To the next candidate for the Hall. Captain Crunch who did some serious time for a failed caper in Poland, courtesy of his snitching thieving little brother Nick. At that point from what we learned in the course of the film Nick was the brains of the operation (was the Eddie Daley figure on the endless con) and the Captain was strictly day labor, the wheelman, essential but still day labor. Rode a fast bike, car, trolley train whatever was necessary but fast. The MO there (and later you would be surprised how most cons will basically do a variation of whatever worked back when they were figuring stuff out) was to sell some connected Eastern European mobster a stolen Gauguin, or what he thought was stolen but which was a poor forgery. (Another rule to keep in mind if you are working the art forgery racket is at least let the paint on the forgery dry before moving the damn thing.) Mobster man got angry and Captain Crunch’s weasel brother to save his own crummy ass sent Captain over for a nickel, at least that is what the Captain wound up doing. In any case enough time to plot a serious revenge, work out many kinks in those sleepless nights when you worried about what the guy in the next bunk was up to. And hope it was not you and that pretty boy face of yours.   

A con can’t help being a con, born remember and the key is that anything that smacks of success is liable to seem foolproof-that and pure greed for openers is enough to get Nick, you remember Nick  Captain Crunch’s sleaze-ball brother who rolled him over to keep himself out of that hell-hole Polish prison where his own pretty boy looks would have him down as somebody’s hands-off “girlfriend” in about two seconds flat. When I first heard the scheme Captain figured to pull I thought it had too many moving parts, and it probably did. Mainly I was worried that Captain, never having been anything but a wheelman and cheap carny daredevil was out of his league, should have pulled things back a bit but Captain knew his scumbag brother only too well. The more he added the wetter Nicky’s lips got.

Captain first set up a fake manuscript ploy, a rare book with the idea once it was known to be stolen the inevitable “have to have” collectors would be lined up down the hall. Maybe this is no axiom but important nevertheless in high-end cultural cons as greedy as the con is there are a million collectors ready to pounce the minute they heard the item had been purloined just to have in in their inner sanctum private stash. Why, except the ever painful feeling every time I go to the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum seeing those still empty frames, do you think I knew that the art thieves on that caper would have no problem on the black market getting rid of the merchandise, the stuff has probably changed hands a few times by now.

Here is the beauty of Captain’s idea he “sells” the idea to Nicky of not only grabbing one copy but making a bunch of copies and “satisfying” the laundry list of collectors with their own fake manuscript copies. Who are the collectors going to tell if they discover the damn thing is bogus, a fake? The thing is that it costs plenty of upfront dough to do good fake jobs and Nick is the only one with ready cash to front most of the deal. Reel him in. Reel him in good Captain. And he does with an added kicker. Nicky had stolen a Seurat art work, you know the French pointillist, and was trying to move it after stiffing his partner in crime who needless to say was pissed and ready to stiff him as part of Captain’s scheme. After Nicky fronts his share of the start-up costs of the manuscript he is ready to take delivery and sell to whoever wants the things at a nice mark-up. Problem: the whole con from start to finish was nothing but thin air. Meanwhile governmental agents who had been watching Nicky for a while pounced on him for the art theft. Meanwhile Captain has had a bunch of copies of the Seurat made and easy street beckons. Nice, except for poor Nicky who now has to watch his bunkmate’s every move.

You know Eddie Daley should have branched out into art cons not some crazy gabacho idea of ripping off the drug cartel boys. Maybe he would have wound up in the Hall of Fame rather than down in some lonesome grave who knows where.