Confidence

Rating:
Summary: Great Movie. But...
Review: I am a great fan of these slick, hip movies..
The movie is great. The acting is up there with the rest.
Rachel Weisz is very talented and Paul Giamatti is becoming a real true Actor. Dustin Hoffman, Ed Burns and Andy Garcia are as good as the usually are. The Music is fun and has smart as the movie is. I think it is great that they used european groups such has FC Kahuna. The Plot is intressting, and the narration also.
But to me this movie could have been AMAZING but it wasn't it was great.
Something is missing maybe some lack of complex or an end wich was a bit exagerated (it's a very good end but a bit too much), clearly something is missing.

I recommend this movie and all the other James Foley's . .

Rating:
Summary: No Confidence!
Review: I gave this film one star only bec/ I didn't seem to have the ability to give it a negative rating or indicate an imploding star. This is really an awful movie. Nothing particularly original or interesting about it. The con is only a twist if you've never seen a movie about cons or grifters. The characters are neither believable or interesting. Garbage. Don't waste your time.

Rating:
Summary: If you didnt like it , You didnt UNDERSTAND it
Review: Amazing movie, I watch a lot of movies, and this was not disappointing. This a movie for smart people, it does have some low culture views to it, but at the end, amazing. It truely angers me when movies are good and then had a crappy ending, this movie had one of the best endings.

Rating:
Summary: Ultraslick. Ultrahip. Ultra...so what?
Review: One of the special features included in this DVD is "Anatomy of a Scene" in which the director, writer, editor, production designer, actors, and cinematographer all talk about what was going on with one particular scene in the film. In their sound bytes, they discuss the "emotional subtext" of the scene, how the editing emphasizes the main character's imagining how this heist will go down, et cetera, et cetera.

It's all so hip. It's all so well thought out, so cool. Yes, it is all that. But somewhere in this mix, somebody forgot to give us characters we can identify with. While it is true that plotting is the main force in a thriller/action movie, without characters that move the plot along, it's a soulless journey. And even the plot here is a "been there, done that" kind of thing--a heist planned by a bunch of ultra-smart hipsters who know the con scene inside out, backwards and forwards and several of whom do not trust each other.

Nothing new, and that's too bad. Dustin Hoffman and Andy Garcia play the most colorful characters here and if more had been made of them taking an ACTIVE role in the film, it might have been more interesting. But they do their thing on the side while the lead guy, Jake Vig--played by trying-to-be-tough Edward Burns--puts the "plan" in motion.

So beneath all that ultra-hip jump cutting, slo-mo, gradual fades, zoom ins and outs, and overall "watch me do this fancy camerawork" stuff is a formulaic caper film that we fans of such things have seen before a million times.

Even Soderbergh's remake of Ocean's 11--with a totally miscast Julia Roberts--is better than this. James Foley, the director, has done much better work. Check out Glengarry Glen Ross or The Corruptor. The latter breathes new life into the crime film and is a great piece of action cinema. But Confidence the film is itself is a con. Don't get Confidenced.....

Rating:
Summary: WOW!
Review: i had been waiting so long for this movie to be released on dvd, since it had not been playing at a theatre in my area. The wait is finally over, and i was not disappointed. A spectacular con film, comparable to the sting or ocean's 11, with the twists of the usual suspects. i'm confident that you will like it.

Rating:
Summary: Fast-paced and never boring. But I just didn't care.
Review: This 2003 film didn't stay in the theaters long and I can understand why. Starring Edward Burns and Rachel Weisz, its all about the confidence game. Everyone is conning everyone else and the audience is kept in perpetual mystery about what is truth and what is fiction. I've seen this theme dealt with before but it's usually done better. Even a small role by Dustin Hoffman, cast as a bad guy, doesn't help. The fact is that I just didn't care about the characters. And, after a few minutes, I knew enough not to believe any of it. The film did hold my interest, however, and was never boring. And the stars were nice to look at. But there are so many better films around that I just have one thing to say. Why bother?

Rating:
Summary: Underrated Little Gem
Review: Confidence is a very underrated film, the type which passes in theatres unnoticed, to be rediscovered again by viewers in the video/DVD market.
The first impression I got from the film,(about a group of grifters,pulling off their biggest scam to repay the debt they owe to a crime lord they mistakenly swindled),is how well and slick James Foley's direction is.He has had so far a hit and miss career, with films alternating between the good 'noir' genre (Reckless, At Close Range) and the average drama (Two Bits, The Chamber), and doing a Madonna film in between, Who's That Girl..So certainly Confidence is his best film to date.
He successfully manages to keep the pace from the first scene till the very last, with a mix of clever editing, cool soundtrack, and engaging performances by all the cast.
Edward Burns refreshingly is acting in a movie that he did not write or direct, Rachel Weisz has not only a seductive presence on screen and is very beautiful to boost, but she can act too!

Andy Garcia,Luis Guzman,Paul Giamatti,are all wonderful, but of course the actor who steals the show is Dustin Hoffman. With his manic portrayal of the crime boss, he proves yet again that the label 'one of the best actors ever' is not accidental.In my opinion, it is one of his best roles in years.
I can describe Confidence as a faster sexier version of David Mamet's House of Games,with a touch of Ocean 11, a film that I am confident will surprise you, keep you watching till the end (with its nice twist), and will leave you with a satisfied feeling.It is probably not an all time classic, but with all these factors present,I am not complaining.

Rating:
Summary: Conning itself.
Review: Flat headed heist movie that lacks the goods to con itself. Ed Burns does have the chops to pull off his character well, but he comes up short next to his fellow actors, and a very bad script. Dustin Hoffman is great for the very small time that he is in it. And Rachel Weisz outdoes them both with a great performance that the screenplay does not even try to capitalize. Doug Jung's script is really not a script at all but a series of blatantly rip off material from better con films, and a poorly done rip off at that. The DVD itself is better than the movie, and that's because you can see how bad the screenwriter had dropped the ball with this film.

See it for Dustin Hoffman, Rachel Weisz and Ed Burns's performances, but don't expect a coherent plot.

Rating:
Summary: Mid-level thriller
Review: "Confidence" is slick, engrossing thriller which would have been better if the character development had been stronger. The people in the movie are interesting to watch, but, for the most part, we don't much care about them. This is a stylistically superb, but detached, film. Comparison to David Mamet's superior 'House of Games" or to Stephen Frears' superb "The Grifters" is inevitable.

Edward Burns plays Jake Vig, leader of a small group of con men. Their game is to stage fake murders, the object of which is to scare away a 'mark' who, in his haste, leaves behind a whole lot of cash. One afternoon, things go astray when the victim turns out to be the accountant for a notorious gangster called King [Dustin Hoffman]. King nabs the group and demands his money back. Jake makes a deal in which his guys will take one of King's rivals for five million dollars. King sends in one of his men to keep an eye on things, while Jake recruits a beautiful woman [Rachel Weisz] to help in the con. The question is whether or not the clever Jake can outwit the infamous King in a tense cat-and-mouse game.

All the actors try hard, but are limited by their roles. The best performance is Hoffman's, who plays a sleaze ball with great relish.

The cinematography is excellent and lends a colorful, moody feel to the movie. The editing is fast paced. If the script had been sharper, this would have been a classic film noir.

Rating:
Summary: Confidence-It's not about the money. It's about the money.
Review: Confidence, a new con-caper from director James Foley and featuring an all-star cast is clever, funny and sophisticated. Edward Burns plays Jake Vig the handsome con man, the leader of so-called "professionals." Pulling off a con for these guys is a sinch or so it seems when Burn's men by accident steal money from the wrong guy, Winston King played by masterful Dustin Hoffman. Vig has two options, die or pull off the slickest and biggest con of his career. In the new pack he brings along a sexy con artist, Lily played by beautiful Rachel Weisz and his returning crew featuring Paul Giamatti, Brian Van Holt and Luis Guzman. Though Burns is in on some trouble because a Special Agent is on his tail played by Andy Garcia looking rather old with his beard.
Though Confidence has a great, intricate plot that perplexes, the film features many colorful characters, different in a unique way which makes the film even more watchable and interesting. The film is filmed in flashbacks in the sense that Burn's character is being held at gunpoint, which can be irritating at times. Though viewing this film is well worth the money, infact I bought it without seeing it and I enjoyed it very much. I wish I saw this one in theatres but oh well I'm glad I got to see it right away when it was released on Video and DVD.
Confidence is rated R for Language, Violence and Sexuality/Nudity. The language can be rather strong and excessive at times, the violence is understated, which includes some gunplay (usually bloody) and fistfights. The sexuality isn't explicit but it does contain reasonably strong sexual innuendo and partial nudity. I highly recommened this one.