Confidence

CONFIDENCE

Rating: B-

Dustin Hoffman plays this mean sumbitch criminal kingpin type. Cross him, and you'll regret it for the rest of your life, which won't be all that long. In one scene he headbutts one of his lackeys in anger. Hoffman delivering a headbutt is about as ludicrous as Morgan Freeman spouting, "Let's go kick their ass," which we've already seen earlier this year. Something tells me 2003 won't be a banner year for movies, and we haven't even gotten to the summer explosion fests yet. Speaking of Hoffman, I happened to notice Andy Garcia also has a part in this film (how's that for a non sequitur?) The connection, wise guy, is that I've always suspected Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino were actually the same person. And I've always known for sure that Andy Garcia and Al Pacino were the same person. So when I saw Hoffman and Garcia billed in the same movie, I had to stop for a moment and consider the possibility that maybe I'm a raving lunatic. Fortunately, this self-doubt was fleeting - not only are Hoffman and Garcia not in any scenes together (none at all!), but they both wear this ridiculous scraggy gray beard throughout the film. Like we're not supposed to notice it's actually the same guy. And is Al Pacino in any scene with either of them? Not for a minute. Quod erat demonstrandum.

Anyway, Edward Burns and his band of grifters pull the old "let's pretend to shoot each other so some poor sap runs away and leaves his briefcase full of money behind" gag. Unfortunately, the sap happens to work for Hoffman, whom we learned in paragraph one is a mean sumbitch. When Burns gets wind of this (one of his comrades receiving a bullet through the forehead is his first clue), he meets Hoffman face to face and promises to square things up by conning one of Hoffman's enemies out of 5 million smackers. The game is afoot, and now Burns needs to indoctrinate a female accomplice into the group to make his plan work.

For reasons known only to director James Foley, Burns chooses Rachel Weisz. Weisz is scary to look at, and I don't mean that in a good way. Ever notice how many times a role calls for an unusually attractive woman, and they give us somebody who could play the bride of Frankenstein without makeup? Someone like Uma Thurman, or Cameron Diaz, or... Rachel Weisz? I mean, it's not like there's some kind of shortage of attractive actresses in Hollywood. There's one sequence where Weisz is posing as Burns' wife, and they're supposed to be this cute young couple. Every time she smiles, a cold shiver passes through your body like someone just walked over your grave.

Foley makes some other odd decisions as well. I'm not sure why he includes several scenes with pigeons symbolizing some form of bad luck. Don't we get enough of that crap from John Woo? Then Weisz shows up at the door with her hair dyed red, and Burns and company go into conniptions. Plus she wears a scarf with pigeons pictured on it. Needless to say, this adds absolutely nothing to the movie. Nor does the intentionally grainy cinematography and multi-colored background lighting, which seems a tad out of place married to a script with no pretensions of artsyness. What worked in Eyes Wide Shut doesn't necessarily work for The Sting.

Confidence is enjoyable enough to sit through, but it's not nearly as clever or original as it pretends. We've witnessed every one of the con game tricks performed in other movies. You can almost bet there'll be someone who's not on the side they appear to be, and you're pretty sure that somewhere along the way Burns and Weisz will have a falling out and we'll have to decide if they're really mad at each other or just pretending. And you can be damn certain the old switcheroo will be employed at least once before the end credits come up. But perhaps the greatest weakness lies at the very heart of the con. For all the posturing, it basically comes down to them paying off a bank official to wire them the money to an offshore account. Not exactly stimulating cinema.