Just when you feel confident you know who's being scammed in Confidence, director James Foley pulls another shell game.

Like David Mamet's Heist, Frank Oz's The Score and, most recently, Neil Jordan's The Good Thief, Confidence is a wily drama about con men who con each other.

Jake Vig (Edward Burns) is a flamboyant grifter who specializes in fleecing petty criminals or their greedy employees.

Jake and his three accomplices set their mark up by making him think a deal has gone tragically wrong.

It's a great gig until they steal $150,000 from a mob boss who calls himself The King (Dustin Hoffman).

Movies like Confidence are as much about the characters as they are about the scams.

Burns is ultra cool just as Rachel Weisz as Lily, the femme fatale he brings into the gang, is ultra hot.

Burns exhibits considerably more charisma than he has in the past but he's still hampered by his squeaky, nasal voice.

The sexual ambivalence Hoffman brings to the mobster may be an excellent source of humour but it also makes him seem more calculating and dangerous.

Doug Jung's screenplay owes much to the staccato, salty dialogue of a Mamet movie and Foley's direction tips its hat to early Quentin Tarantino. Foley likes to tilt his cameras and wash out certain scenes and his use of flashbacks is meant to mislead as much as to inform the viewer.

Confidence is a slight-of-hand we've seen before but it's handled with enough confidence and pizazz to make it seem fresher than it is. It really is fun being conned by those in front and behind the cameras.

(This film is rated 14-A)

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