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"She would have been a good woman … if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life." -Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find"

Despite being highly stylized and visually ambitious, there would be some definite merit in holding a gun to Director James Foley's head and demanding what he really wanted to accomplish with the pedestrian crime caper, Confidence. The first mistake is casting Ed Burns in the lead role when his acting range consists of just one facial expression and a series of incomprehensible grunts, but perhaps Foley was hoping for a moment of forced revelation of his own. He had no qualms with putting his decorative lead actor on his knees with a gun to his head, but unfortunately exhausted the Flannery O'Connor device by using it for expository dialogue about the film's various plot twists. After a few flashbacks to the same scene with Burns spouting bad dialogue on his knees, one may actually entertain the idea of pulling the trigger.

The most frustrating part about Confidence is that there is so much potential for a really well executed film. It teeters on the very brink of being witty or highly stylized, but always seems to fall off with unnecessary cuts or drawn-out and contrived monologues from one-dimensional characters. The frenetic pace of the film, with its countless cuts even when zooming into an actor's mien, screams of the director's insecurity and compulsion to over do everything. Just when a character is within close enough range to be dissected, Foley inserts jump cuts and flash backs to disrupt a smooth depiction or any vestige of empathy for his characters. Irregardless of whether it is the director's insecurities over under-developed characters or his overweening need to make everything more than it is, the film's more-is-better credo is difficult to stomach.

Make a film with B-list actors like Burns and relegate extremely talented actors like Dustin Hoffman to the sidelines is the second mistake. As soon as Jake Vig (Burns) starts narrating to the camera about the nature of being a grifter and how a heist is executed with Confidence, cracks in the film's veneer begins to appear. Opening rather impressively with a play through of a heist, the film unravels itself in a L.A. Confidential style with non-linear narrative meant to throw the audience off track on whom to trust and whom to pull the trigger at. However, as Jake's scam backfires and not only leaves him in the bad graces of a mob boss aptly named King (Hoffman), but it also culminates to the murder of his friend. Since being a grifter means that there's only a select fraternity of guys Jake entrusts, he also faces the difficult task of breaking in a new partner in the curvy shape of Lily (Rachel Weisz). Even while courting the pick-pocketing Lily with his irresistible stoic expression, Burns still looks disaffected even while being sexist and misogynistic. In the role of the femme fatale, Weisz does illuminate the screen, but there's a lack of the raw electricity that seminal sirens like Lauren Bacall had by just walking across the screen and nearly lighting it on fire. Weisz is almost as sorely miscast as Burns with her cerebral girl-next-appeal squeezed into some tight tops.

All the while, a parallel scenario begins to unravel between small-time crooked cops and an eccentric insider (Andy Garcia) whom we cannot determine is on the good or bad side. In a film about grifters trying to trump other grifters, there is a surprise ending, but because the set-up is so mediocre, it's not the biggest shock in the world.

The general rule of thumb with movies about heists and insiders is that if not in the directorial hands of Steven Soderburgh, Bryan Singer or Michael Mann, it could be skipped. However, if there's one reason to watch this film, it is for Dustin Hoffman's impeccable performance as a mob boss suffering from ADHD and intermittent boughts of rage. Always a perfect character actor, Hoffman is delightfully over-the-top as he effuses over his sexual tension towards Jake Vig's ass and big hands. From a film with such a strong name, Hoffman is the only one who aptly exudes any Confidence and is worth paying money to see.

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