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- Keep your friends close and your money closer.
Summary Capsule
- A group of scammers fleece the wrong guy, and end up fleecing some other guy to pay back the money they fleeced from the first guy. Or do they?
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Rich's Rating: The biggest con of all…
Rich's Review: There’s a certain artistry and flair that I’ve come to expect from any film which advertises itself a heist movie. I love to root for our criminal anti-hero’s as their complex and convoluted scams fleece the money out of the hands of the multi-billion dollar capitalist empires and into their own, and I like to see it done with a sort of clever panache and complex schemes and double-crosses where you can play along at home, like a gameshow, except with bigger prizes and worse consequences for failure than just being sent home with the booby prize.
It was out of the ashes of this process that Confidence comes slinking across my TV screen, desperately trying to fleece me out of my hard earned money, enticing me with Andy Garcia and Dustin Hoffman, and looking at worst passably interesting and at best, possibly one of those all time great action/crime dramas. And because I have the willpower of soft cheese left in the hot sun, it didn’t take long for it to seduce me with its charms.
Unfortunately for me, Confidence is one of those films that it’s almost impossible to review without spoiling the entire film for the readers, so I’ll just give you a basic outline of the initial plot and let you decide for yourself whether it sounds interesting. Fortunately for me, I have a lot of stuff to say in general about Confidence afterwards so that I can pad out the length of this review and make it at least look like I am making an effort.
The plot to Confidence is initially a very simple one, the kind of fare that gangster movies for generations are built on. A team of conmen, lead by Jake Vig (played by Edward Burns, who looks kinda like the three-dollar knockoff version of Ben Affleck) pull off the perfect scam — but what they don’t realise is that they’ve scammed hotshot Gangster Mr. King (Dustin Hoffman), who is understandably upset. In order to square the money they stole from King, Jake’s gang agree to scam an international mafia money laundering bank in order to pay back the money they owe king, before he starts doing things to them involving pliers and blowtorches that they would probably not enjoy. However, things go from bad to worse for Jake’s little gang with the arrival of Special Agent Gunther Butane (Andy Garcia) on the scene, who has a score to settle with Jake.
Now, there’s nothing there that should surprise you if you’ve seen any gangster movies before; it’s all pretty much cookie-cutter set-up for any dozen heist movies you’ve ever seen. What separates these films is not the set-up, but rather the meat and potatoes of the film, or more specifically, exactly how clever and convoluted the scam itself is. And sadly, this is where Confidence lets itself down in every conceivable way.
My first complaint is that Confidence is told in narration, so we pretty much know how things work out from the very beginning of the film, which kills a lot of the tension straight away. My second complaint is that the grifters’ scheme is, well, dull. There’s no intricate timing, no exciting break-ins, fake outs, or anything. While it’s probably an accurate reflection of how a lot of scams actually work, I’m here for entertainment, not a course on corporate economics and the intricacies of business loans.
However, the real let-down in Confidence comes with each twist and turn of the plot. Here’s a note for any Hollywood screenwriters who are writing this kind of movie — if you’re going to have a plot with twists, turns, and betrayals, it helps if you set them up first. Give the audience something to look back on and say “Holy cow, how on earth did I miss that?” What Confidence delivers is a series of twists that would make a corkscrew look straight without giving any foreshadowing and scant little motive. The plot progresses from Dues Ex Machina to Dues Ex Machina, all the while smirking smugly and going “Look how clever I am!” while I just looked on with the same mixture of confusion and disgust as I get when I ask girls on dates.
And it’s a real shame, because there are some really, really good reasons to watch Confidence. Andy Garcia and Dustin Hoffman both play interesting characters who just dominate every scene they are in, and Hoffman’s ADD afflicted Gangster Kingpin is the best entertainment in the entire film, hogging all the good lines and doing a great impersonation of Al Pacino to boot. Ed Burns and Rachel Weisz are perfectly acceptable in their roles, and there are a few supporting characters who make up for doing next to nothing in most of the film (like Jake’s crooked cop friends, and Lupus, the gangster sent by the King with Jake's crew to make sure he gets his money) by having one or two scenes of genius.
Confidence is a whole mess of great actors and interesting ideas all shoved together, but then when it came to delivering a coherent and logical storyline, the writers just said “Well, it’s happen like this because we say so”, and broke for lunch. Without that ill-timed lunchbreak, who knows what could have been. Because of it, Confidence becomes the ultimate in irony; the only real scam going on here is the one to try and get you to watch it in the first place.
 Seconds away from yet another "wardrobe malfunction"
Is It Worth Staying Through End Credits?
Intermission! [some sources: IMDb]
Groovy Quotes
King: Look into my eyes, and say "We’re set."
Jake: Now you're an accomplice to murder. Everything you thought you had control of has gone out the window or is currently dripping down your leg.
If you liked this movie, try these: This review page was last updated on 7.26.04 MRFH Home . Reviews . Findaflik . Features! . MRFH Forum
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