Mediocre heist movies don’t usually get so pathetically bad as Confidence (2003, James Foley) so easily sinks to. Some intrinsic problems at the casting level alone: 1) diminuative granddad Dustin Hoffman in glasses on a string as scary independent mobster type? 2) Ed Burns as a confidence man smarter than the hair gel on his coiffed head? This movie wanted to be an Elmore Leonard/Steven Soderbergh ‘s Out of Sight but more Tarantino and a little bit of Dashiell Hammett femme fatale thrown in. Children, let’s not get our hopes up here, okay? It also had that annoying metacritical stance, ala John Travolta in Swordfish, as Hoffman says to Burns (twice no less, as the second is in flashback), “Sometimes too much style will kill ya.” Some other laughable moments for me included the post-synced absurdly loud unzip as Burns and the lovely but wasted here Rachel Weisz remove each other’s drawers and their backseat of the getaway convertable make out as the credits roll. I actually sort of felt sorry for the aging frat boys forced to sit next to me in the theater. I should have warned them that this is not the kind of movie I can take seriously and perhaps they’d not like their enjoyment tarnished by my inadvertent “gag me with a spoon” hand gestures and inappropriately timed cackles. But then again, maybe those kinds of guys need a little conscious raising.
Posted by karen at April 26, 2003 3:49 PM