Confidence

You've seen it a thousand times.. a heist movie where everyone is quick and clever, the occasional twist and a couple key plot points where the audience is left out in order to fabricate a surprise ending. On the other hand, what you've seen only once in a great while is a cast of this magnitude. Edward Burns not playing the cute, childish heartthrob. Rather, a straight forward, no nonsense con-artist. I certainly don't think he gives the best performance in the film, but it's a welcome change from Burn's typical characters. Rachel Weisz is believable and sexy. Paul Giamatti, Andy Garcia, Donal Logue and Luis Guzman are as brilliant as usual. With a cast like this, you could expect a very well performed movie even if it's not a well scripted movie.

But then you add Mr. Dustin Hoffman, who plays a vicious but ambiguous gangster called "The King". Hoffman is absolutely brilliant in this role. If you had never seen another Hoffman movie, you would swear that Hoffman made his living playing nothing but tough guy gangsters. Which, I guess, is what great actors do. Hoffman really steps it up to the point where you genuinely feel creeped out when this guy is in a scene. The script is retread heist material and even the ending has been done more times that you can count on fingers and toes. If your a fan of the genre or just a fan of great acting, you might want to give it a shot. In this case, Confidence refers to acting... not script.

Grade: C+