Confidence (2003)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Main Menu Audio Interviews-Cast-Dustin Hoffman and Ed Burns (Actors) Interviews-Cast & Crew-Red Carpet Interviews - Cast And Crew Theatrical Trailer Trailer-Anger Management, National Security
Rating
Year Of Production	2003
Running Time	93:16
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (60:27)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	James Foley
Studio Distributor	Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	Ed Burns Dustin Hoffman Andy Garcia Rachel Weisz Paul Giamatti Morris Chestnut
Case	?
RPI	$39.95	Music	Christophe Beck

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.1 (448Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	Yes, especially by Rachel Weisz
		Annoying Product Placement	Yes, Budweiser features in a number of scenes
		Action In or After Credits	Yes, Plenty of action before and during opening credits

    Confidence is the latest offering from director James Foley, who is perhaps best known for his film Glengarry Glen Ross.  Confidence is primarily the story of a gang of 'grifters' or con-artists, led by Jake Vig (played by Ed Burns - Saving Private Ryan, 15 Minutes). His gang have recently crossed paths with a powerful mobster by the name of "The King" (rather overplayed by Dustin Hoffman - Rain Man, Tootsie, and many other films) whose money they accidentally swindled in a prior scam. So how are they going to pay him back?

    To repay their debt to The King, Jake's gang, including new member Lily (Rachel Weisz - almost unrecognisable in appearance and character from her role in The Mummy and The Mummy Returns), intend to con a major banker linked with the mob to get away with the scam of all scams, and the tidy sum of $5 million dollars, although they only owe The King a fraction of that amount.

    Of course, despite their planning and experience, the gang run into problems along the way, such as double-crossing team members, the police and of course, The King himself. These little twists and turns along the way, as well as (SPOILER ALERT: highlight with mouse to read) a decent twist at the end, help make this a reasonably entertaining way to spend 90 minutes of one's evening.

    A very slick and modern production, with plenty of style to the direction and cinematography. It's also pleasing that there are some good performances from several of the cast members, including Rachel Weisz, Andy Garcia, Paul Giamatti and Morris Chestnut.

Video

     This is a great video transfer of a very modern looking film.

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, which is its original theatrical ratio. It is 16x9 enhanced.

    The transfer, and the original film, is sharp at all times. You can clearly make out skin textures during close-ups of actors' faces, as well as the wall surfaces. Shadow detail is spot-on at all times, except a few scenes in which the director/cinematographer obviously deliberately altered the colour palette for greater contrast.

    There was no visible grain throughout the presentation, nor was there any visible low-level noise during any of the frequent dark scenes.

    The colour palette chosen by the cinematographer, Juan Ruiz Anchin (Glengarry Glen Ross), was deliberately very rich in colour, both in the indoor scenes as well as any external shots. The bar scenes in particular were beautifully coloured, with strong blues, reds, purples and greens featuring in all these shots. The colour transfer on this DVD is up to the task of delivering this rich palette and never once is over-saturated or suffers from colour bleed. An example of the rich colour can be seen at 1:55 in which the fluorescent reds and blues are well presented. I can imagine that a VHS transfer of this film would suffer many problems with oversaturation or bleeding in many scenes!

    There was no trace of aliasing, and only a few positive and negative film artefacts, none of which were distracting in any way. An example of a positive artefact occurred at 19:08. Mild use of edge enhancement was noticeable in a few scenes, such as at 12:28, but was never overwhelming.

    Surprisingly, there were no subtitles on this DVD at all.

    This disc is a dual-layered disc (despite the cover claiming that it is single-layered). The layer change was at 60:27 and was reasonably well placed during a scene transition. The music stopped for about 1 second, which was the main giveaway of the layer change.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The great picture quality is matched by an excellent, if not reference quality, soundtrack. There is only one soundtrack on this disc, an English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack presented at 448Kb/s.

    Dialogue is clear at all times, including some of the deliberately mumbled lines by some of the characters. It is also in sync with the characters' mouths at all times.

    The music, by Christophe Beck, was primarily synth based with driving rhythms that suited this film style quite well. However, it is nothing particularly memorable.

    The rear surround speakers are used almost continuously throughout the film right from the opening scene. While there is not all that much in the way of directional effects, the rears are used well for ambience as well as to support the music, especially in the night-club scenes such as 24:40.  Whilst split surround effects were rare, there were occasional examples, such as the traffic noise moving from across the rear speakers such as at 13:06.

   The subwoofer was called on frequently to support the music, such as at 33:40, as well as to add impact to some of the effects.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Main Menu Audio

    The main menu is presented in 1.85:1 and is 16x9 enhanced with audio and animation. The menus for the Chapter Select and Special Features are presented in similar format but are silent and still.

In Depth Interviews

    There are two separate interviews under this selection, one with Dustin Hoffman and one with Ed Burns, each of which run for about 8 minutes and are presented in 1.33:1 format with Dolby 2.0 sound.

    These are basically the usual 'how great it was working with this Director/Cast/Crew/Script/etc' advertising documentary. There is a little bit of background information about the script and the characters. Hoffman claims that he based his role on a variety of real life characters he had known.

Red Carpet Interviews-Cast & Crew

    A collection of interviews with Ed Burns, Dustin Hoffman, James Foley and writer Doug Jung, obviously filmed literally on the red carpet outside the film's premiere. The interviews are conducted by a representative from Lion's Gate Films, the production company, so it's really just more advertising material than any real insight into the film.

    There's more sycophancy by Ed Burns towards Dustin Hoffman, matched by the latter's proclamations that he extensively improvised his lines just prior to, or even during shooting.

    The Director, James Foley, looks and sounds quite sinister and looks quite distracted most of the time, much like he is just fulfilling his duties! 

    The writer, Doug Jung, is the last one interviewed, and he talks about the many changes to the script, as well as the inclusion of 'authentic' superstitions into the storyline.

Trailers

    3 trailers are included on this disc.

    Confidence: (2:11) the original trailer for this film, but very surprisingly presented in 1.33:1 fullscreen and in Dolby 2.0 with no surround flag.

    Anger Management (2:08) - presented in 1.78:1 letterboxed and not 16x9 enhanced. The soundtrack is Dolby 2.0 with no surround flag.

    National Security (2:07) - the trailer for this rather unappealing film, presented in 1.85:1 letterboxed, and in Dolby 2.0 with surround encoding.

    The R4 version, while it contains a few extras, misses out on a large number of extras present on the R1 version, including:

• Commentary track featuring Ed Burns, Andy Garcia, Dustin Hoffman and Rachel Weisz
• Director's commentary
• Writer's commentary
• Documentary on the 'making of'   
• 11 minutes of Hoffman Outtakes (perhaps from his frequent 'improv' on set???)
• 2 music videos

    The R1 version appears to miss out on:

• in depth interviews
• red carpet interviews

    If you're a fan of this film, I think the R1 version would be the way to go.

    Confidence is essentially a modern day con artist movie that doesn't offer too much beyond a reasonable plot, 'hip' dialogue, colourful cinematography and modern, if slightly derivative, direction. The dialogue, of which much is made of in the interviews, often strays into the hard-to-believe, especially some of Hoffman's lines. Perhaps that's part of the style that James Foley was hoping to infuse into this film.

    Fortunately, Confidence does offer a little bit of substance behind the style, in the form of a reasonable plot and believable acting by most of the cast with the noticeable exception, in my opinion, of Dustin Hoffman, who seems prone to overact as The King. I can almost imagine Nicolas Cage (a real over-actor) playing exactly this sort of role in 20 years time!

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall