MOVIE REVIEW

Confidence (2003)

Starring: Edward Burns, Rachel Weisz, Dustin Hoffman
Director: James Foley

Rating: R

Studio: Lions Gate Films

Review Posted: 4.23.03

Spoilers: Major

By Sara Michelle Fetters

Only Con is On the Audience in "Confidence"

I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with Edward Burns. (Granted, off-screen during the 2001 Seattle International Film Festival he had me swooning during our brief ten-minute interview. Talk about charming and sexy.) Something about him just annoys me. Maybe it’s his smug, slightly crooked smile or cocky self-possessed demeanor, or it could just be the way he spouts out his lines like it’s a privilege for the audience to hear him speak. I’m just not sure. All I really know is that in every film he’s been in, from The Brother’s McMullen to Saving Private Ryan, Burns has just as many scenes that I detest as those I find adorable.

Count the new James Foley con artist film Confidence as being part of that body of work, but amped up about eight degrees. There are maybe two scenes in the movie where I didn’t think all of Burns’ lesser qualities were in evidence, and as a character that appears in almost every scene to only have two where I didn’t dislike him heavily, that’s a bad thing.

Burns plays Jake Vig, the brains and leader of a gang of con artists; insideman Gordo (Paul Giamatti), shills Miles (Brian Van Holt) and Big Al (Louis Lombardi), and two corrupt LAPD detectives Lloyd (Donal Longe) and Omar (Luis Guzman). Together, they swindle 150 thousand dollars out of an unsuspecting accountant whom, unfortunately for them, works for local crime boss Winston King (Dustin Hoffman).

Soon both the accountant and Big Al turn up dead and Jake and his crew realizes they need to make things right with King or they’ll soon be joining their friend on a slab. Jake goes to King, striking a deal with the ebullient and volatile gangster to pull a spectacular con on Morgan Price (Robert Forster), a hugely successful banker with deep ties to the mob. Pulling in a new shill, high-class pickpocket Lily (Rachel Weisz), saddled with one of King's henchman and being pursued by obsessed FBI agent Gunther Butan (Andy Garcia), Jake and his crew only have days to pull off the biggest con of their careers, failure being akin to a death sentence.

The problems for Confidence begin right away. Jake tells his story to a Price henchman (Morris Chestnut) at gunpoint, so knowing right from get-go that the movie must ultimately reach this point certainly takes away the concept of surprise. And when it comes to the final twist – every con film has to have a twist – there isn’t one for things get spelled out clearly early on in Jake’s voiceover that someone with even an ant’s attention span will know how the fast-talking con man will survive.

Granted, I’m not totally against Confidence. There are indeed some bright spots and some extremely enjoyable performances. Both Guzman and Logue have a wonderful Mutt and Jeff quality that’s charming and Andy Garcia seems to be just having a gay-old time slumming as the soiled, greasy and supposedly unflappable Butan. Giamatti, too, seems to know all the ins and outs of his character twice-fold and is just a joy to watch.

But the real showstopper is Hoffman. This is the dirtiest, grimiest and most ill mannered I’ve seen him since Hero, maybe even since Midnight Cowboy. He frolics through the film like an oily leprechaun in heat. In fact, it is in his two choice scenes with Hoffman that Burns stops being an annoying and vainglorious presence and instead becomes winning a partner in some of writer Doug Jung’s witty repartee. Hoffman still steals the scenes right from under him, of course, but I’m talking about one the most gifted American actors to ever hit the screen so this isn’t all that shocking. Confidence in all actuality needs more of his over-caffeinated presence, losing its forward momentum after he disappears only to hover over the proceedings like a ghost for the rest of the picture.

What’s most surprising about Confidence’s eventual failure is that director James Foley knows intimately how to handle just this sort of material. The little seen James Woods thriller Best Seller would be ample proof of that by itself, but when you consider near-classic interpretations of Jim Thompson’s After Dark My Sweet and David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, this point becomes even clearer. Yet, he let me down this time, producing a film that isn’t so much awful as pointless. Confidence’s only real con game ends up being on the audience who paid to see it, and I can’t think of a bigger crime than that.

Rating: 2 out of 4

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