CONFIDENCE - a hidden gem, or just a worse Ocean’s Eleven? | Just Films & That
Just Films & That is a podcast that celebrates underrated and underseen films. In this episode, Josh wanted to revisit Confidence. He reckons that it’s underseen, and that it could be a little bit underrated. Alice on the other hand might need a bit more convincing. You can listen to all episodes of Just Films & That now, wherever you get your podcasts.
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00:00 "You took my money, what's gonna happen now?"
00:02 "I play a card. You get a card, I get a card."
00:05 "We get square. All right."
00:08 Confidence is a crime drama con man film from 2003. It stars Edward Burns as Jake,
00:13 so he's our protagonist and main con man. And we follow him as he assembles a group of fellow con
00:18 men and women to do a big con. There's grifters, there's bribes, there's banks and money and
00:23 everything you would expect from this sort of film. So Josh, you picked this one, so tell us
00:28 a bit about why you picked it. Yeah, so I picked this one because I think it's a little bit
00:32 underseen. So in terms of box office, it made $23 million worldwide. I think it probably should
00:40 have made more money. And I also think that it deserves to be seen by more people in terms of
00:46 the ratings. Now, at the time of recording on IMDb, it gets 6.6 out of 10 on Rotten Tomatoes.
00:53 The audience give it 70% and the critics give it 69%. I'd say maybe slightly underrated,
00:59 but the main reason I picked this was I thought it was underseen. Now, had you seen it before?
01:04 I hadn't seen it before and I don't really think that I'd heard of it. So I had quite a lukewarm
01:09 reaction to this film. I don't think I liked it as much as you did, but there was certainly
01:13 a lot to like in there. The main things for me were the technical elements and some of the
01:17 cinematic techniques that they used to tell the story. Things like the camera angles, the lighting,
01:22 the blocking, just some of the ways that the scenes were put together I thought was really
01:26 effective and really immersive. There's a lot of shaky cam in this as well that I wasn't really
01:30 expecting. It really made you feel like you were in there in the action with the characters.
01:34 I think what I said in the episode was it's sort of like Ocean's Eleven but a bit grubbier. I think
01:37 it's quite entertaining. I think there's a decent balance in it of exposition and pandering. It does
01:42 that thing where characters lay out what they're going to do and how they know better and how the
01:46 comms going to work and all that sort of stuff, but they don't do too much of it. You're good,
01:51 grifter man. It's hard to tell when you're lying. What was the other side of the coin then? What
01:55 did you really not like? So the main issue for me with this film is that I didn't really connect to
02:01 Edward Burns' character and I feel like when you compare him to maybe someone like Will Smith in
02:05 Focus or George Clooney in Ocean's Eleven, he just didn't carry the same kind of charisma and the
02:11 same sort of gravitas that you would expect to see from your leading man. Now it's quite difficult to
02:15 pinpoint exactly what I mean by that because he isn't a bad actor and it wasn't a bad performance.
02:20 It just felt like he turned up on the day to read his script and that was it. I didn't feel like
02:24 there was much depth there and that he didn't really do any extra work to figure out who this
02:28 man is and what his motivations are. Pacing falls down a little bit about two thirds of the way
02:33 in. I think it becomes a little bit bogged down and it's in its own plot. I'm still saying it's
02:38 underseen, probably appropriately rated. So what would you say? For me those scores are a little
02:43 bit overrated. Though there are some really positive elements to the film, as a whole it
02:48 just didn't hit me where I wanted it to. In terms of underseen, I think if you're into this sort of
02:52 thing, if you do like sort of calm man heist films, then this is probably really for you.
02:57 And that is quite a low amount that it made at the box office I think overall.
03:00 So I'll give it to you that it could be a little bit underseen.