amesmonde A seasoned con-artist's most recent trick goes wrong when his team steal money from the mob, they then go about arranging another hustle to get the money back.Director James Foley's Confidence pretty much set the formula for the UK TV series Hustle (2004) that appeared a year later and the more recent Leverage (2008). It's flashy and slick and with stylised lighting, camera work and editing.Rachel Weisz is debatably miscast, nevertheless Edward Burns is excellent in the lead role and rest of the cast are adequate. Both Andy Garcia and Dustin Hoffman are underused but what is there is, is first class. The flashbacks and narration from Burns guides you though the film, written by Doug Jung, the script is witty although there's a little too much exposition and the tone feels inconsistent at times.If you've already seen the aforementioned TV series the twist will come as no surprise but if you want to see the seed of these shows and what a gritty film version would be like - look no further.

gelman@attglobal.net Movies about confidence games enjoy great popularity and, depending on the cast and the plot twists, they can be extremely entertaining. Improbability doesn't count but clarity is important. The audience needs to be convinced by the ingenuity of the final twist. "Confidence" has an excellent cast -- Ed Burns, Rachel Weisz, Dustin Hoffman, Paul Giamatti and Andy Garcia among others -- and it is well plotted. But the mechanics of the final con job are not very convincing, and in this respect it fails the final test. It's good on a cold evening for watching on a DVD by a warm fire. But it's not entirely satisfying. Burns is handsome, Weisz is beautiful and Hoffman is reasonably convincing as the kingpin who's been robbed and wants his money returned with interest. However, "The Sting" is my yardstick, and "Confidence" doesn't begin to measure up. Ed Burns isn't Paul Newman; even George Clooney isn't Paul Newman, though he comes closer than Burns does. And despite Silicon Valley chit-chat, the con is relatively low tech.

Petri Pelkonen Confidence tells about a bunch of grifters, led by Jake Vig.The infamous crime lord Winston King they call The King isn't pleased since they stole money that belongs to him.Now in order to pay him back he gives the group a job where they have to con a man named Morgan Price.Consider it done.Confidence (2003) is a movie directed by James Foley.It has an incredible cast.Let's start from the most legendary one, Dustin Hoffman.He plays The King, who else.Edward Burns plays Jake Vig.Paul Giamatti is Gordo.The Femme Fatale, Lily, is played by Rachel Weisz.Luis Guzmán is Officer Omar Manzano.Andy Garcia is the mysterious Special Agent Gunther Butan.Robert Forster is Morgan Price.Leland Orser of ER plays Lionel Dolby.Robert Pine plays the nice man Mr. Lewis they con.This movie looks really good.It'stylish and cool.In movies like this things rarely are what they seem to be.So you can't predict the ending at any point.If you can, you're really good.

Mark Heiliger If this film had been released 20 years ago, it might be seen as a startling, revealing look at the world of con artists. But it didn't come out 20 years ago, before David Mamet's House of Games and Stephen Frears' The Grifters were released; it came out in 2003, after con artists have become almost passé. It has been made with a lot of competent talent, but that cannot make up for a lazy script.Role call: Dustin Hoffman, Ed Burns, Andy Garcia, Rachel Weisz, Paul Giamatti, Donal Logue, Luis Guzman, and even Tommy "Tiny" Lister, who played the President in The Fifth Element. Burns leads a team of con artists who inadvertently rip off one of Hoffman's friends. Since Hoffman plays a crime lord here (with ADHD!), he has one of the team members killed. Burns doesn't give the money back - instead, he offers to work another con for Hoffman to pay back what he took. Nice enough setup… Performances all around are satisfactory. There's one scene where Hoffman has forgotten to take his ADHD pills that is, I'm certain, the reason he took the role. Lots of groping of women and slapping of faces. The movie is directed with energy and style by James Foley (director of Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross) and has an interesting green and purple lighting scheme.Unfortunately, it all comes down to the storytelling, and flashy as the camera moves may be, the script doesn't cut the mustard. It's full of interesting characters, but fails to be full of interesting scenes. The story of the con is about as predictable as they get. Many twists and several turns lie within the plot, fulfilling the need of the genre, but those twists and turns never create any real drama. Some movies are about more than their stories. This movie is about ONLY its story. Every word spoken is spoken to advance the plot, not to see the characters in any sort of three dimensional way or to create something out of their situation that we average schmoes can relate to. An annoying flashback/flash forward structure exists only to capture an audience's attention in those first precious moments of a film. It has no real purpose in the grand scheme - the movie is not more entertaining because of it, so it should have been abandoned. This is a sufficient con/caper movie, by which I mean it wraps up its story in a mostly sensible way with the proper amount of (false) tension. But that to me hardly seems sufficient.http://www.movieswithmark.com