The stylish House of Games is at its best when its professional con artists stage elegant scams admired even by the marks (which includes the audience). A psychiatrist specializing in treating compulsive behavior violates her psychotherapeutic boundaries and enters the world of card sharps and flimflam men almost as an antidote for career burnout. Professionally successful, poker-faced and chain-smoking Camels, she assumes male prerogatives (from boldly prowling dark streets to her cropped hair and broad-shouldered suits). Mamet's works for the stage and his screenplays, populated mostly by tough guys and con men, have few significant female characters. When a woman is central, he usually sets up a straw woman to knock down (often literally), revealing something about what sort of women scare him. Played by his then-wife, the shrink in House of Games is punished for violating male boundaries, playing their games, and attempting to change the rules. But in the end she is no less scary. -Lee Amazonas