"Sometimes style will get you killed."

This is what Dustin Hoffman's kingpin warns Edward Burns' grifter in Confidence. He should have passed this advice on to screenwriter Doug Jung instead.

Jung has crafted an unassailably slick caper that unfortunately fails to engage his audience. Sure, his characters talk and act smoothly, but they are dispassionate all the while. And if the protagonists are not emotionally involved in their own predicament, then how can we be expected care? Not that this would even be a problem if the caper film was funny like Ocean's Eleven, but there are few laughs here.

Jung and director James Foley set up such a tangled web of deceit that one needs a scorecard to keep track of who doublecrossed whom. Confidence a movie where everything seems to go wrong, but then it turns out that it's all part of the master plan of some puppet master. But then it turns out the plan was just part of a bigger plan from another puppet master, and the viewers end up first scratching their heads in confusion, then shaking their heads in indifference.

Even less interesting is the "heist" itself. It comes down to a boring bank withdrawal, nowhere near as sexy as the casino job in Ocean's or as brilliantly taut as the big scam in David Mamet's superb con artist film House of Games, a film Confidence dutifully homages in at least one scene.

The one bright spot is the pair of corrupt cops played by Luis Guzmán and Donal Logue. These humorously doltish characters are actually far more charismatic than either Burns with his transparent coolness, or Hoffman with his irritating, gum-chewing brashness. Guzmán's presence particularly reminds viewers of the countless crime movies in which the fine character actor has appeared in the last few years, all vastly superior to this one.

-- Reviewed by Nicholas Norcia