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Film
Con heir
Helped by a strong cast that includes a creepy Dustin Hoffman, Confidence is a worthy successor to the jewel of the con-man genre: The Sting.
By MARTY CLEAR
© St. Petersburg Times
published April 24, 2003
[Photo: Lions Gate Films]
Edward Burns, left, and Dustin Hoffman star in Confidence. Hoffman is the scammed crime boss and Burns the upstart con man.
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It's almost impossible to talk about any con-game movie without drawing comparisons to The Sting.
Confidence, in particular, demands comparison with the acknowledged masterpiece of the genre. The basic plot is virtually identical: A young, attractive con man inadvertently takes money from a powerful older criminal, then works with him to try to con someone else out of even more.
Like The Sting, this movie draws the audience into a world of professional confidence men who conduct their work with dispassionate expertise. And of course, the ultimate victims of the con are moviegoers, who eventually discover that some of the good guys are bad guys, and vice versa, and that alliances are almost never what they seem.
Given that he's treading such familiar territory, director James Foley (Glengarry Glen Ross) does a pretty good job of keeping Confidence lively. Even if you have a pretty good idea of what plot twists lie ahead, Foley and screenwriter Doug Jung throw enough style and bombast in so that you still can allow yourself to feel surprised.
It helps that Foley has assembled a cast packed with hot young stars (Edward Burns, Rachel Weisz), wizened veterans (Dustin Hoffman, Andy Garcia) and I've-seen-that-guy-before character actors (Paul Giamatti, Luis Guzman).
You could argue that Burns doesn't have enough charisma to carry the lead. It's the kind of role that calls for a quiet intensity, and sometimes Burns forgets the intensity. But he does an okay job, and the rest of the cast has more than enough fire to overcome Burns' coolness.
Dustin Hoffman plays one of the creepiest roles of his career (the well-connected gangster who Burns rips off), and does so to unsettling perfection. It's a small role, somewhat inconsistently drawn, but Hoffman's performance makes you squirm every time he appears on screen.
Like a number of 60-something actors, Hoffman takes a lot of smaller roles these days. Unlike a lot of others, though, he usually injects his characters with as much soul and individuality as his leading roles.
Garcia is almost unrecognizable as a federal cop who dogs Burns and company. Like Hoffman, he seems to be having great time with an unrestrained performance.
Weisz (as a hooker without a heart of gold) has just enough strength, and more than enough smoldering sexiness, for her role, and Giamatti (who seems to have been in about half the movies made over the past 10 years), turns in one of his best performances.
The biggest problem with Confidence is that Foley, instead of just telling his story, uses the already hackneyed ploy of skipping around in time. It can be an effective device when used sparingly and expertly, but since Pulp Fiction it's become horribly overused. Here, it's confusing and annoying, and only helps telegraph plot twists that wouldn't be that hard to predict anyway.
Confidence
- Grade: B
- Director: James Foley
- Cast: Edward Burns, Rachel Weisz, Andy Garcia, Dustin Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Donal Logue, Luis Guzman.
- Writer: Doug Jung
- Rating: R for language, violence and sexuality/nudity.
- Running time: 98 minutes
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