Con Man

Wow, I feel I was conned into watching a horrible movie... I am a big fan of Ving Rhames and James Caan. Talia Shire, Gianni Russo and Mark Hamill are in it too and I think they were all conned. I hope they were paid for their work. This is something you would see as a TV movie. I'm sure the true story is good but this movie isn't. I'm giving 5 Stars only because of the actors in it, not for the content. Could have been maid so much better but I hear Barry Minkow took the money. I say watch it and keep an open mind but don't get conned into thinking Barry Minkow is reformed or a Hero of any kind!

The lead actor was 34 at the time of filming this dreadful film when his character is supposed to be16. Tells you all you need to know.

While I have seen some dogs in my time, and it is difficult to compare one bad movie to another, I would argue that this is clearly the worst movie of this year and possibly the worst movie since the turn of the century. Tortured is how I would describe the dialogue and story. Throughout the production they attempt with the deftness of a Hippo to ineptly attempt to steal little bits from other movies (cup drop from Usual Suspects) each time to poor effect. The. Dialogue. Is. So. Stilted. This is supposed to be a "con" movie. A heist, a caper. It should be high energy, snappy. It is not. It is so very not snappy. And yet, I have to say that in a bizarre way, I was sort of entertained. The whole thing is so unbelievably bad, it's like watching a train wreck in slow motion. I actually sat through the whole thing wondering every minute if it could get any worse and becoming shocked as it surpassed it's own mediocrity with every single scene as it continued it's spiral into oblivion. If you'd like to hate every single frame of a film for wasting your time and degrading your life, than this is the movie for you. I've given it zero stars, but I'd like to point out that my rating is absolute zero which would rate at -273 on the regular scale out of ten. Save yourself. Run away from this film.

I have to believe the negative reviews are from people that hate Minkow, and therefor have to hate the film by some weird transitivity process. He is a monumental scumbag, and this film was partly financed with money Minkow conned from his church. The delightful thing is the postmodern nature of the movie. The A-list actors and Minkow playing his older self were shot and in the can. Then in post, the producers found out Minkow was not only doing a "short and distort" scam after getting out of prison, and then, to top it off, he scammed a few million from his church and millions from the parishioners. So in post the producers changed the ending and I am pretty sure they added some "4th wall" stuff like the guys talking about Minkow playing himself in the movie you are watching. So cherish the irony. What started out as a hagiography about a con man that found Jesus in the joint, has to change to be about a con man that got even better at conning in prison.

Check out Minkow's Wikipedia entry. I learned the story from an article in the The Hustle website titled, "The secretary who helped uncover one of America's strangest Ponzi schemes". That will give you the context of this movie, and why it is a bit chopped up and off-putting with the voice-overs and 4th wall stuff. It's quite fun hearing the dialog written and filmed under the impression Minkow was a reformed con artist and a good Christian. Then you can see all the little patches they put in to make clear the guy was an even bigger scumbag than what he went to prison for the first time. I hope this is not a spoiler, but Minkow got convicted three times and did three prison sentences, just getting out in June 6, 2019. He might be doing a quad-fecta, since he now claims to be reformed and is promoting a 2023 Discovery+ docu-series "King of the Con". Pro tip: don't believe it.

As to specific criticism here, well, I thought the young actor playing Minkow was great. OK, he is in his 30s playing a 16-year-old at the beginning. But they did need a good actor, and one that had some big guns to match Minkow's biceps in the second half of the film. Minkow's acting is lame compared to the A-listers, but still pretty good for a newbie. Everybody else was great for what ended up being a TV movie. The A-list actors did a good job and the camera and sound were OK. I didn't find the soundtrack deficient.

Con Man is free on Amazon's FreeVee streamer, so check it out. It's pretty solid right from the beginning. If you can like the beginning and are not too put off by the chopped up aspects after the producers found out he was still a scumbag, you won't regret watching.

There's no way this film cost $25m I think Barry put in some bogus receipts.