James Foley churned out a brilliant film led by a terrific cast with Confidence. If you like crime/thriller movies and films that deal with the art of conning, then you must see this film, again if you already have. You’ll be hard pressed to find a better, similar film.
Edward Burns stars as master conman, Jake Vig. Once Jake and his crew, Gordo (Paul Giamatti), Miles (Brian Van Holt), Big Al (Louis Lombardi), and corrupted LAPD officers Whitworth (Donald Logue) and Manzano (Luis Guzman) con $150,000 from a man who happens to be the accountant of a crime kingpin (Dustin Hoffman), Jake offers his services to the kingpin to pay him back.
Jake promises to pull off one huge con to get the kingpin his money back. Hoffman agrees, and one of the kingpin’s men are sent to work with Vig and the crew. Rachel Weisz joins the gang as Lily (a pickpocket), and helps set the con in motion by befriending a lonely bank higher up (John Carroll Lynch). Things seem to go disastrously wrong though.
Few times does a film piece together the way Confidence does. Almost everything that could possibly to right, went right in this film, and the result is a 4 ½ star brilliant film. The cast is top notch, especially for this film, it probably wouldn’t have worked nearly as well with a different cast.
James Foley deserves credit for taking what could have been a train wreck of a film, and making something truly outstanding out of it. There’s more than enough twist and turns in the film to confuse the hell out of almost anyone, but Foley maintained all of this and told it in a way that isn’t very confusing at all and glues you to the screen, as the film grabs a hold of your attention and doesn’t let go.
It’s not a classic, but it does come mighty close to it. This isn’t a renter, weekend flick, this is a must have for your DVD (or Blu-ray) collection, so go out and pick up a copy today.
Confidence gets a four out of five: GREAT.
