In a sense, films like The Sting and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels are movie fantasy in its purest and most appealing form. Bible Belt farmers turning over their worldly goods to some passing evangelical huckster. Movie con artists almost always earn their livelihood by exploiting the greed or vanity of their marks. The con game becomes poetic justice, an illustration that a fool and his money are soon parted and you can't cheat an honest man. A variation on the theme is when the mark turns out to be just another con artist running a game on the con-man hero.
Heartbreakers gives the formula a nifty post-feminist twist.
They're in the middle of a game as the movie opens. On their wedding night, Maxine works Dean up into a horny lather, then apparently passes out. The next day, frustrated and unsatisfied, Dean makes a play for the obliging secretary at his office, who is only too obliging. The secretary, of course, is Page working undercover. In comes Maxine to catch them in the act.