"So I'm dead." Impressive start from a narrator. We have seen this kind of beginning before (in one of my top ten movies ever), but......I cannot continue because I don't want to ruin your entertainment. To tell the truth I shouldn't say a single word about the movie to avoid giving any help or hint.
James Foley's film from 2003 is one of the biggest surprises for me in the last weeks. Just check down my grade and you will see that I mean this surprise absolutely positive. Please don't look after the director' oeuvre on the imdb otherwise you will miss this movie. It's better if I confess the most painful details about him here. The recent Perfect Stranger (Willis-Berry) is a big shit but cannot be as huge as his third film was back in 1987. I'm not even dare to write the title, the brave ones can click here. BUT as I said forgot all these past and watch the Confidence (or if you like CONfidence) - you won't regret, I promise!
So the narrator is dead - what the cinephile says? "It must be a flashback-movie!" Right. The first flashback asks from our condemned protagonist: "Does your life flashing before your eyes?" And the story starts - not the entire life but the last 3 weeks flickering down during the approx. 90 minutes running time of the film.
The parallelism with the noir classic is not a coincidence: Foley's characters have their predecessors in the best genre ever found out in Hollywood. Of course everybody is contemporalized, but the main features are recognizable (ice-cold gangster he and chain-smoker femme fatale she). Even the style is re-formed, if you interested: Bordwell wrote focusing on this film about the special technique (wipe-by axial cut) of speeding up the movie (The Way Hollywood Tells it, page 175.).
It is almost perfect. One minus point because one time (at least out of ten) I was smarter than a screenplay. The rest I was coned as everybody else in the story.
Günther Butan:)
9/10
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