The Con Is On

Normally I just jot down a few thoughts about a film on this site. I find it helps me remember them better, plus I can go back and see how wrong I was about stuff.

This post is more of a public service announcement (or denouncement) about The Con Is On. STAY AWAY.

It started with a Wikipedia rabbit hole. I got to JC Chandor (director of Margin Call and All is Lost) and saw he exec produced this. Clicked the link and saw it was a heist comedy starring Uma Thurman, Tim Roth, Alice Eve, Sofia Vergara, Parker Posey, Maggie Q and Stephen Fry. The cast list alone made it worth a shot.

My mistake!

From the get-go there’s a very half hearted attempt at a Saul Bass title sequence followed by about ninety minutes of Thurman and Roth running through the script in various locations.

No one speaks as if they know what is going on, it’s as if they are reading their lines for the first time. Are they trying to be funny, clever, menacing? I don’t think anyone knows! The screenplay also tries as hard as possible to make no sense at all, despite having quite a simple core idea at the centre of it.

Perhaps the biggest misuse of talented actors I can think of (apart from Tim Roth who is terrible in this).