Con Man

The movie about con-gangster Minkow, often mentions how charismatic he was and had to be to be succesful. But seeing him playing himself in the second half of the movie (a very strange effect imo), made me question this. He doesn´t come over as charismatic.. or anything special. On the other hand he seems to have talked quite some known names from Hollywood to be in this flick.. so maybe it is true after all.. or he just paid them well (what i think is the reason for his "success" anyway.. greed.

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 found this quite watchable and interesting but my major criticism is in the casting of an actor in his 30's playing the role of a 16 year old! Some well known faces to spot but several were under utilised. I could well imagine Tom Hanks playing the role of Barry Minkow. It did feel like there were huge chunks of the story missing or glossed over but anyone that says it's 'the worst movie they've ever seen' can only have watched a limited amount. I've watched tons and my rating of 5 out of 10 indicates it as one i watched all the way through, but could've been a lot better.

I also don't understand how my review can be too short when i've just read one that has way less sentences!

And they never finished describing what a complete scum bag this guy still is. What gets me is that many of his church friends are either in denial of him being the devil or just naive sheep at the slaughter.

This film subject is a great film to explore but the film fails on many levels! One thing is the fact the fact the real life subject plays himself. (Never a good idea). Also the film also is "Too Bright". The colors or over saturated. The is a crime story. Also the screenplay doesn't cover what happened to many of the people that helped Barry create his con.

In case you don't know the story Con Man is the real life story of Barry Jay Minkow, a son, businessman, fraud buster, actor, pastor... and felon. Born in 1967, Barry Minkow went on to set up a highly successful carpet cleaning company but was imprisoned in 1988 for one of the world's largest investment and accounting frauds through a Ponzi scheme..

This case is so interesting that I am positive another film will get made. I am sure it will be better than this attempt.