Few things that annoyed me in this film (I voted 6) *SPOILERS*

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A film's story is everything to me; I cannot like a movie where people say 'the performances are worth the price of admission alone.' Having said that, you'll understand that I didn't like "HoG" very much. Now I understand that Mamet wasn't making a documentary on con games but a fictional feature film using the con as a device. And I cut him a lot of slack as the shrink, shown as an extremely isolated and almost pathologically-laden obsessive, couldn't pick up on the con game directed towards her from early on; she was a perfect mark and bought into everything the con men had planned for her. But I started questioning the story because after all Mamet created a shrink who had the smarts to graduate medical school, continue years of training and even became a writer hip enough to write a best selling book. So where were her smarts when she finds out that the $25000. gambling debt, which her patient says will cause him to commit suicide (as he pulls a real gun from his person) and could believably make her want to intervene, by bullying the note holder into forgiving the debt..... where were they when she is shown a measly $800 debt? Yes, she's obsessive but at this point her intelligence should trump that. They don't have their emotional hooks in her yet! She's analytical and would have deduced something about the analysand who lied about the debt. But the movie overlooks this and the film continues. A huge organization of con men conspire to get her to give them $80000 of her money (probably $125000 in today's dollars). Yeah, o.k. good but very complicated plan to get her dough. But the con is flawlessly executed. Never a touch of the happenstances that occur everyday in life when even much simpler plans are thrown off because of events that take place outside the control of each of us, much less a group of guys working a con (even the hotel front desk man must be in on the scam also in since he doesn't pick up the room key that the fake guest throws down next to the mark.). I didn't turn the set off however because though the movie is no longer a beautifully turned psychological thriller it's no more absurd than scores, no, hundreds of other thrillers. It's like watching a juggler toss three balls in the air, not Penn and Teller doing something amazing. Then, as the movie starts moving towards its climax, two story moves not only derail the fluff that precedes them, but in the case of this viewer, actually makes me angry. To wit: we're to believe that this wet and overwrought victim enters the bar where the experienced and mature gang is discovered inexplicably speaking (too loudly) about their score.....and is not noticed? Even when one of the con men brushes into her? To expand on this remember this is not a radio program or something one is reading in a book. It's a visual medium and so how is it possible that she is also standing behind a latticed booth, perhaps thirty feet from Mantegna (who is facing in her direction) and is not seen? It get worse. She overhears Mantegna say he's taking the last flight to Vegas and when she's next seen, hiding at the airport, an urban airport emptied of the usual extras; other passengers, security or airport personnel by the way which explains why she's able to confront him and pull a
gun. Her strident voice attracts no attention and then they open a door clearly festooned with 'Don't Open This Door' language, i.e. a security door and no sirens or bells go off. Yes, pre-9-11 but terrorism and/or highjackings were happening even earlier than 1987 and certainly were well publicized. [I don't want to go to caps now and wish I could use a different font for the next sentence.] But they've now entered an airport baggage area where no one, repeat, no one is around, and she shoots him three times, with an interval between shots by the way, and still the place remains empty and deserted. I mentioned early on that story is very important to me and these last scenes that I describe in particular shifted me into the Tilt section on the pin ball machine and caused an unusual reaction in me as a movie patron: I felt defrauded and did, in fact, think that my time had been wasted. (One other thing. In the other section on IMDB, a whole group of viewers didn't like the acting in the film because the characters were "boring". They're obviously innocent in the ways of how David Mamet expresses characterizations.)

"In a situation like this anyone who hasn't grown up in a barrel or something would suspect that the envelope is really empty. However this woman who is supposed to be intelligent enough (she's a famous psychologist after all) doesn't have a clue."

Store clerks and bartenders get cheated by tricks like that all the time. She is no more gullible than any of them. She was watching him up close and thought the envelope had money in it. That's why you never let someone hand you an envelope, or bill, without closely examining the contents. You have them put all the money on the counter, and you count it, before giving them change. John Cusack tried a similar con in The Grifters, flashing a $20 to the bartender and swapping it for $10 when the bartender turned his back. This is easy to avoid. Never give anyone change, unless you counted their money, and it all adds up.

The way they explained the con would never work, except on an idiot, because you don't hand someone $20 for a stack of $1 bills without counting them first. They told her to give them the $20, and then told her she counted the money and there was only $19. Nobody would be that gullible. But you can't expect the con artist to reveal exactly how their tricks are done. Mamet and Ricky Jay distorted those tricks, so nobody could use them successfully in the real world.

Yeah there were a lot of huge plot holes.

Schrodinger's cat walks into a bar, and / or doesn't.