Confidence

I’m not a big fan of flashback movies, and Confidence is no exception. The problem with flashback movies is that you know how the movie is going to end before it begins. In a movie about confidence schemes this isn’t the best of ideas. The hope is, at the end of a movie such as this, the audience walks away and says, “Wow, I never saw that coming.”

Unfortunately, I did see it coming. The good news is that it arrived in style and class, with proper acting and effective dialogue. The bad news, as there is always bad news after good news, this doesn’t make up for the obviousness of the story.

If you’ve seen the sting or any of its predecessors, you know that random exterior characters are rarely random and never exterior. What makes the sting so great is that it fully cons the audience. At the end you do actually say, “Wow, I never saw that coming.”

However, in the case of this film, the audience will have arguments with each other as to who figured it out first. Any astute movie watcher who knows about foreshadowing will pick up on the not so subtle hints that are left out like a purposely-exposed Easter egg for a nine year old.

What this movie lacks is an in-depth and truly interested look at the life of a “grifter”. It has all the cliché terms and obvious “marks”, but it fails to create a world that is entirely different. What happened in the movie is more attune to picking up dates at bars than conning someone out of millions.

It almost seems that the writer Doug Jung bought a book on scams, thought of an ending, and then came up with the simplest confusing way of getting from point B back to point A. Throw in some characters that are in every mob/murder/mystery movie and you’ve got yourself a bankable film. A little more effort and a development of the story along with some honest to goodness con scams that we see created, not unfolded, would have made a world of difference.

Would I recommend this movie? Sure, if you’re ok with nudity, violence, bad language, and murder along with decent acting and a better than average plot. If you want something a little tamer, with a better story, characters, and cons, then go rent The Sting. If you’ve already seen it once, rent it again, I promise that you won’t remember how they did it all and you’ll be once again surprised.