Let's be realistic.

Am I Missing Something?

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Travis (Morris Chestnut) is holding a gun on Jake Vig (Edward Burns) and the movie goes back 3 weeks earlier. Jake and his crew Big Al (Louis Lombardi), Gordo (Paul Giamatti), Miles (Brian Van Holt), Whitworth (Donal Logue) and Manzano (Luis Guzmán) trick Lionel Dolby (Leland Orser) out of a suitcase full of cash. The problem is that Lionel was suppose to deliver that money to the infamous Mr. King (Dustin Hoffman). To even the score for King, Jake agrees to con Morgan Price (Robert Forster). Lily (Rachel Weisz) is the mysterious pickpocket.This is an amazing group of actors doing solid work. It is a con movie where everybody is working an angle and everything is fake. It's a writing exercise and the main problem is that director James Foley is unable to deliver any tension. Edward Burns may be too cool for school. He needs to show a little fear so that the audience can feel the danger. It's a bit of style and the traditional con mystery. However it doesn't get the heart pumping.

If this film had been released 20 years ago, it might be seen as a startling, revealing look at the world of con artists. But it didn't come out 20 years ago, before David Mamet's House of Games and Stephen Frears' The Grifters were released; it came out in 2003, after con artists have become almost passé. It has been made with a lot of competent talent, but that cannot make up for a lazy script.Role call: Dustin Hoffman, Ed Burns, Andy Garcia, Rachel Weisz, Paul Giamatti, Donal Logue, Luis Guzman, and even Tommy "Tiny" Lister, who played the President in The Fifth Element. Burns leads a team of con artists who inadvertently rip off one of Hoffman's friends. Since Hoffman plays a crime lord here (with ADHD!), he has one of the team members killed. Burns doesn't give the money back - instead, he offers to work another con for Hoffman to pay back what he took. Nice enough setup… Performances all around are satisfactory. There's one scene where Hoffman has forgotten to take his ADHD pills that is, I'm certain, the reason he took the role. Lots of groping of women and slapping of faces. The movie is directed with energy and style by James Foley (director of Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross) and has an interesting green and purple lighting scheme.Unfortunately, it all comes down to the storytelling, and flashy as the camera moves may be, the script doesn't cut the mustard. It's full of interesting characters, but fails to be full of interesting scenes. The story of the con is about as predictable as they get. Many twists and several turns lie within the plot, fulfilling the need of the genre, but those twists and turns never create any real drama. Some movies are about more than their stories. This movie is about ONLY its story. Every word spoken is spoken to advance the plot, not to see the characters in any sort of three dimensional way or to create something out of their situation that we average schmoes can relate to. An annoying flashback/flash forward structure exists only to capture an audience's attention in those first precious moments of a film. It has no real purpose in the grand scheme - the movie is not more entertaining because of it, so it should have been abandoned. This is a sufficient con/caper movie, by which I mean it wraps up its story in a mostly sensible way with the proper amount of (false) tension. But that to me hardly seems sufficient.http://www.movieswithmark.com

Lets share some cons that we've heard/know of. The gas station change one is pretty cool but I think it's a little sketchy. Here's how it works and btw I'm copying and pasting this from a post. It's quite simple, but you need to be fast, confuse the victim and give him/her no time to think nor count the money. It works this way: You buy something for like $5 bucks, but pay with a $50 (though never leave the money, keep it in your hand) and, when asked for a smaller bill say you don't have any change, but immediately start looking in your wallet or purse to make sure. It is at this moment, when you start looking, that you put away your $50. At this time the cashier will be giving you the change for your bill, then say: "Oh silly me here I have a $5" grab that plus the change the cashier gave you and tell her that she probably needs change, so add the $50 you put away at first with all the other change and tell her you'll give her $100 in change if she gives you a $100 bill. When she does leave quickly, with this con you'd have made $45 bucks.And thats it, let's hear somemore cons that ppl know of !

Enjoyed this film concerning a professional con Jake Vig (Edward Burns), "The River King", who gets in real trouble with Dustin Hoffman,(The King) and has to repay a debit in a big hurry. Dustin Hoffman plays a real bad character who will smile and kill you at the same time or choose to torture you with slow painful results. Rachel Weisz,(Lily), "The Fountain" is an outstanding con-artist herself and very sexy and gets deeply involved with a big heist worth millions of dollars. There is some humor in the night club that The King owns between two so called sisters who have very strong sexual desires for each other and drive the poor King crazy. Great acting by the entire cast and all moving at a rather fast pace. Enjoy.