Confidence

A Con With More Ooze Than Sting

By Gene Seymour | STAFF WRITER

April 25, 2003

(R). Greasy as a paper sack of franchise fried chicken (with contents just as satisfying), this caper flick stars Edward Burns as a grifter who avenges a friend's murder the only way he knows how: by pulling off an elaborate scam. With Rachel Weisz, Andy Garcia, Paul Giamatti and Dustin Hoffman in a flamboyant cameo as a short-tempered hood. Directed by James Foley ("Glengarry Glen Ross") from a script by Doug Jung. 1:38 (violence, vulgarity, sexual situations, some nudity). At area theaters.

'Confidence" is "The Sting" with bad posture and questionable hygiene. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Filmed in a washed-out bluish tint to enhance its drugstore paperback aura, this latest down- and-dirty thriller by director James Foley ably deploys its second-hand caper elements without caring whether you've seen it all before.

How much you're willing to give Foley and company a pass for this depends on how much you dig this genre's familiar elements, especially the con-within-the-con gambit that makes the audience both a mark and an accessory to the cheap tricks. If you don't like playing games - and if, like me, you figured out the plot's penultimate "gotcha" somewhere toward the middle, then you can still enjoy the ride, thanks mostly to Foley's motley crew of actors.

Edward Burns is placed at the center of things as a slick con man with the Jim Thompson-esque name of Jake Vig. While he lacks the slag-like menace of Lee Marvin or even the calculated stupor of John Travolta, Burns is a pleasant surprise as a sharpie who's in over his head after he and his gang of grifters scam the wrong guy.

The mark in question is known simply as "King," a kinky, abusive little big man of the L.A. underworld, played with near-blinding showiness by "Little Big Man" himself, Dustin Hoffman. The "King," ticked off that Jake's small-timers have cost him some major coin, has one of Jake's partners shot in the head and threatens Jake with worse unless he and his pals can pull off an even bigger scam on mob lawyer and rival kingpin Morris Price (Robert Forster).

In recent years, probably since 1997's "Wag the Dog," a welcome decompression in Hoffman's persona has allowed this most mercurially uptight of our best actors to kick back and let fly. Here, bullying and flirting with Burns, Hoffman serves up a thick slice of spiced ham, with just enough gristle to make you wonder if, maybe, he's overdoing it just a tad. No matter. He's clearly having fun, while Burns, within the tightly contained borders of Hoffman's cameo, holds his own by keeping still and, for him, relatively laconic.

The sting operation devised by Jake for Price has a topically post-1990s hangover air to it. He dangles his enigmatic new friend Lily (Rachel Weisz) as bait to draw in an underling in Price's operation to shift big bucks around the digital way. Meanwhile, a grizzled federal agent (Andy Garcia), obsessed with capturing Jake, recruits a pair of corrupt cops (Donal Logue, Luis Guzman) to his cause.

All the actors do a lot with very little, especially Garcia and Paul Giamatti, sweating and grousing as Jake's longtime loyalist Gordo. But for all their efforts, there are many times throughout "Confidence" when you wonder whether flashy dialogue, nasty behavior and low cunning are enough to justify its existence. "Style," Hoffman's King warns Burns' Jake, "can kill you." Here, at least, style, even if it's off-the-rack polyester, saves the day, though not by much.