Confidence

A film so desperate to be stylish that it forgets the very definition of the word, Confidence is a sub-David Mamet noir-esque outing which only highlights the ruthless ambition of its screenwriter at the expense of its star. The hideously exposed Edward Burns plays Jake Vig, the kind of swish confidence trickster that John Cusack is so adapt at playing. His name is Jake Vig and aside from his propensity towards using the sort of language that you might hear at a Rat Pack convention ('the skirt's got a point"); his gig of choice is that of a con man. At the start of the movie, he and the rest of his gang pull off a well orchestrated heist which sees them unintentionally doing over major league LA gangster, the King (Hoffman, chomping on the scenery like it's the only meal he's seen in months). Not a man to be trifled with, the King insists that Vig goes on the grift for him and turn over a rival mob boss. Which is a terribly long winded way of getting Vig and his crew, which now includes the feisty pickpocket (Weisz), to tackle a score so unnecessarily complex that only the screenwriter seems to have any idea of what's really going on.

As he never fails to remind us here - in the broadest strokes imaginable - first time writer Doug Jung is rather fond of the worst possible excesses of the noir genre (characters with no definition but lots of attitude) but he fails to drum up anything new or even assemble his influences in an interesting fashion. Director James Foley keeps things moving as briskly as he possibly can, but Confidence lacks a real centre, heart, and well, confidence in its own ability to entertain.