At the movies - 'Confidence'

The Associated Press

Think of "Confidence" as a poor man's "Ocean's Eleven" -- a heist movie that doesn't have quite the elite cast, elaborate details and effervescence of Steven Soderbergh's film, but is genuinely entertaining nonetheless.

Instead of George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts and Matt Damon, there's Edward Burns, Paul Giamatti, Rachel Weisz and Dustin Hoffman. (Andy Garcia, by the way, appears in both films.)

Instead of targeting Las Vegas' most impenetrable casino vaults, the cons in "Confidence" go after a corrupt banker.

And director James Foley's visual style never truly captures the giddy, glitzy look and feel of Soderbergh's 2001 film -- itself a remake of a 1960 Rat Pack flick -- but it's still light enough on its feet to keep you hopping along.

Burns stars as Jake Vig, who recounts the con in flashbacks while a mob henchman (Morris Chestnut) points a gun at his head.

Jake is the head of a crew of grifters that includes sad-sack Gordo (Giamatti), pretty-boy Miles (Brian Van Holt), Big Al (Louis Lombardi) and dirty Los Angeles cops Lloyd (Donal Logue) and Omar (Luis Guzman).

When Big Al and the target of an earlier scam end up dead, Jake and his friends must make amends to the man they've crossed: crime boss Winston King (Hoffman), who's known as "The King."

Jake offers to repay The King by going after an even bigger target: Morgan Price (Robert Forster), a banker with connections to organized crime. The con entails wooing a lonely bank vice president and setting up an offshore bank account in which to wire millions of dollars.

But Jake can only pull it off with the help of Lily (Weisz), a pickpocket who's such an old-school femme fatale, she can't even light her own cigarettes. While she and Jake have a ton of chemistry, their sexual tension would have been even more intense if they hadn't jumped into bed together in the middle of the job.

If all this sounds familiar now, wait until you hear the characters talk; it sounds as if first-time screenwriter Doug Jung has been reading too much David Mamet. The twists and double-crosses, the cadence of the characters' speech and the repetitiveness of certain sayings are reminiscent of much of Mamet's work -- namely "Heist" and "Glengarry Glen Ross" (the latter of which Foley also directed) -- with desperate, crafty characters doing whatever they must to get their hands on some cash.

Other moments recall "Pulp Fiction," with its images of a bleached-out Los Angeles where everyone has a gun pointed at someone else.

And there are elements of "Catch Me If You Can," with Garcia as an FBI agent who's pursued Jake across the country, just as Tom Hanks' G-man chased an elusive Leonardo DiCaprio.

"Confidence" zips by quickly and, well, confidently. Burns finally gets a chance to show off his capacity for charisma, after straight-man supporting roles in films including "15 Minutes" and "Life or Something Like It."

Giamatti, with his deadpan comic delivery, gets some of the film's best lines. "Are we planning a con or are we doing a rendition of 'Our Town'?" he asks when he surveys the random crew Jake has assembled.

Hoffman seems to be having the best time of all, playing a volatile, vaguely bisexual gangster who hits on Jake and Lily and takes Ritalin for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. It's his most engaging work in years -- probably since 1997's "Wag the Dog," fittingly, another film written by Mamet.

"Confidence," a Lions Gate Films, is rated R for language, violence, and sexuality/nudity.

Running time: 98 minutes.

Three stars out of four.