| Confidence | | Cast : | Edward Burns, Rachel Weisz, Dustin Hoffman | | Director : | James Foley | | Studio : | Lions Gate Home Entertainment | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby | | Released Date : | April 25, 2003 | | DVD Released Date : | July 20, 2004 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), English (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | July 27, 2005 | | Summary | The true sequel to OCEAN'S ELEVEN | Content
 | If you enjoyed the 2001 version of OCEAN'S ELEVEN with its great ensemble cast and witty dialogue with a great twist at the end then the movie "Confidence" should definitely appeal to you. In fact I would go as far as to say that this movie is the true sequel to the Clooney vehicle and not the OCEANS TWELVE that appeared in the same year.
And hey, Andy Garcia even shows up in this movie also, this time as a federal agent hunting down the hero of the movie (played by Edward Burns).
The movie opens with a familat movie trick. Held at gunpoint with his life on the line the hero recounts in flashbacks how he found himself in his present predicament. We learn that his crew pulled of a con on an accountant, taking the man for over $100,000.
The only problem is that said accountant was playing with the money of big-time mobster "The King" (played with zany relish by Dustin Hoffman), and he's none to happy with their antics.
So, the team strike a deal with King to pull off another sting this time against King's sworn enemy, a crooked banker, for a cool $5 million.
What follows is fairly familiar territory (at least for those who saw OCEAN'S ELEVEN). The additional members of the team are assembled and the job is pulled through a series of machinations. Then at the end there is a major twist that turns everything on its head, but still fits in well with the overall structure of the story.
The performances are also very good in this movie with top marks doing to Hoffman as an ADHD mobster and Rachel Weisz as a pickpocket who is recruited onto the team to help snare one of the vice presidents at the targeted bank.
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| Rating | | | Date | June 23, 2005 | | Summary | The con is...on you! | Content
| I liked Ed Burns "Sidewalks of NY" more than this one. Yet Confidence is the kind of movie you'd watch on a boring sunday afternoon, when there's nothing good on TV. It wants to be smart, but doesn gets there. The writing is poor, and motivations of the main characters are weak. Would you run a scam operation from your own home? They use their place to do cons, thinking the guy will be too scared to come back!!!
dusting Hoffman doesn't sell it as a mafioso, but with such bad writing, he did what he could. This one movie that should have never been done. With so many better con movies out there like Matchstickmen, Ocean's Eleven and the like, we didn't need Confidence. Christopher Walken's "Scam" with Lorraine Bracco (from the Sopranos) is a much enjoyable and better movie than this one. At least in Scam there's chemistry between the leads, and strong motivations for their actions. |
| Rating | | | Date | June 09, 2005 | | Summary | A goodish sting | Content
| On the DVD case, Peter Travers of Rolling Stone calls it "One sweet, sexy sting of a movie!" We agree.
Dustin Hoffman is perfectly cast as a weirdly mobbish type, with some serious sexual hangups. Andy Garcia is actually the most likeable character I've ever seen him play. And Rachel Weisz is, as usual, beautiful and sensual and sassy. (See her in "The Mummy" and its sequel with Brendan Frazer. Really sweet and wonderful there!)
All in all it's not quite -- but I have to say nearing it -- the Robert Redford/Paul Newman "The Sting," but it certainly is a fun sting to watch. We think it will be better the second time around, so we're looking forward to watching it again. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 17, 2005 | | Summary | Predictable! | Content
| As soon as you see the first con you know that the rest of the movie will be full of them, and that what seems obvious will be anything but. That has become almost a cliché for this genre. The smooth talking leader, the nerdy number two man, the seemingly dumb operative and, of course, the lovely young woman.
A crass version of an updated cross between Mission Impossible and The Sting without the sophistication. The Dustin Hoffman character was also a cliché, a disgusting inhuman type. It was impossible to feel anything for any of these people, and the story and progress of the movie left me cold. A mindless attempt at entertainment at best. |
| Rating | | | Date | May 04, 2005 | | Summary | Fun but not all it could have been | Content
| The problem with Confidence begins with Edward Burns' delivery. Okay, he's cool, like Chili Palmer in Get Shorty. Okay, as Dustin Hoffman's character says, he's a pretty boy. But the film opens with Burns on his knees, as an angry black man holds a pistol to his head and encourages him to tell his story--how weak a conceit is this? And Burns procedes to do so in such a cool--one might even say disinterested--way that we can't ever believe his life is really in danger. The whole business is revealed immediately by Burns' lack of emotion as a con, and all that remains to be hashed out are the details. Admittedly, there is some fun in those very details--in particular Dustin Hoffman is absolutely terrific in his role, and he's got one of the funniest lines ever about the performance of two sisters in his nightclub--I won't give it away. The movie is worth seeing for his part alone, and it's more than the cameo other reviewers claim. But it seems to me that the director expected to keep our interest through the twists of the plot; but anyone who's seen The Sting, Paper Moon, The Confidence Man, or Matchstick Men isn't going to be much surprised. Furthermore, I don't buy the con working the way it was portrayed; walking into a bank and trying to cash a check for five million dollars on the spot would pretty much blow a hole in the entire thing. Either less emphasis on the plot or more--which might end up losing most of the audience--would make a better movie; and more of Dustin Hoffman certainly would have improved it. As it is, enjoy Confidence, but you probably won't be taken in by it. |
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