Product Details

• Actors: Edward Burns, Andy Garcia
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Lions Gate
• VHS Release Date: September 16, 2003
• Run Time: 97 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• ASIN: B0000AGQ2C
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #416,104 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The audience is the real "mark" here, September 23, 2003

By 

Lleu Christopher "www.liminalworlds.com" (Hudson Valley, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Confidence [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Maybe I've seen one too many contrived, confusing, gimmicky, stylish movies about crooks and conmen shooting it out with each other (more like fifty too many), but I found Confidence to be yet another entry in the postmodern film limbo that combine elements from earlier films like The Usual Suspects, Pulp Fiction (or others by Tarantino) and House of Cards (or others by David Mamet). Confidence begins with a flurry of activity, made confusing by the overused flashback technique. Edward Burns plays Jake Vig, the leader of a gang of grifters whose modus operandi is to get marks to front them money and then scare them off with fake bloodshed. They run into trouble when they accidentally rip off someone who works for a feared gangster known as The King (Dustin Hoffman). The King is a modern movie cliche, the psychotic gangster with a unique idiosyncrasy (he has ADD), often played by Dennis Hopper or Christopher Walken. Hoffman is not the obvious choice for such a role, but he's enough of a pro that he brings the character to life and makes him amusing and even a little scary. Unfortunately, no one else in the movie is as interesting as Hoffman and the many twists and turns the script takes are rather mechanical and predictable. We know in a movie of this sort that nothing is what it appears and that the end will reveal some clever surprise that is not really a surprise at all. Edward Burns is too slick and nonchalant throughout the action, even when someone has a gun pointed at his head. Rachel Weisz is Jake's sultry love interest who may or may not be on his side. There are several other characters whose true identities and loyalties are not known until the end, including a pair of corrupt cops and a federal agent. The problem is, by the end, I didn't really care. I wish scriptwriters and directors would get back to basics, like character and story, and cut down on the flashbacks and excessive plot twists.