confident

Paul Keaveny

THIS slick and entertaining film enjoyably passes a couple of hours but its whole style seems to be borrowed from other better films.

In Confidence a gang of con artists, lead by Jake Vig (played by the smug-faced Ed Burns) embark on the king of all tricks.

They want to cheat $5m out of some big banking bigwig to pay off their debt to crazy club owner, The King (entertainingly portrayed - if slightly OTT - by the diminiutive Dustin Hoffman).

To explain the complex double and triple crossings of the movie's characters would take forever as everybody seems to be out to con everybody else.

But it's the audience who are being conned the most because we don't know who is pulling what and on

whom until the very last minute.

Andy Garcia probably has the best role in the film, and also one of the smallest, as an FBI agent whose loyalties are somewhat mysterious.

And English rose, Rachel Weisz, does well as the cocky femme fatale, but I hate films that just insert love scenes for the sake of them - as indeed this one does.

Entertaining though it is, there is something unsettling about this film. It's almost like an American version of Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels - and I really hate that film!

Everyone wears slick suits and everyone is constantly telling annoying anecdotes instead of having real conversations.

Confidence has a lot more style than depth and like a lot of the people I have met who are obsessed by their appearance and their clothes, it turns out to be rather shallow. 7/10 Confidently superficial.