CONFIDENCE

Channel 4

James Foley and David Mamet worked together on the film version of Glengarry Glen Ross , but the playwright's influence also extends to this con-trick thriller with a superior cast. Minor conman Jake Vig (Edward Burns) recalls the details of a recent minor hustle, swindling a mark who works for crime lord Winston King (Dustin Hoffman).

Vengeance is swift and deadly, so Vig tries to make peace. King will call it quits if the team enact a complex fraud on corrupt banker Morgan Price (Robert Forster). The deal is done, and pickpocket Lily (Rachel Weisz) is hired to help. But they fail to factor in Gunther Butan (Andy Garcia), a customs agent who arrests other gang members and persuades them to implicate Vig. As the con goes off, the baton of betrayal gets passed around...

"I think of ( Confidence ) as a distant cousin of Glengarry Glen Ross ," said director James Foley. "The cheerful cousin of Glengarry, dealing with similar things, from an entirely different perspective." The similarities are evident (pressured professionals building fragile worlds on verbal dexterity) and Burns, Weiz and Hoffman carry the film off with dexterity, the latter contributing one of his more idiosyncratic turns as the mood-swinging gangster. A short but sharp role for Paul Giamatti will please anyone seeking out his back catalogue after witnessing his spit-bucket antics in Sideways .