Review of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002) by Cj C — 10 Jul 2012

This is a pretty damn fascinating movie about a really compelling character with an excellent performance from Sam Rockwell and a great script. Definitely one of the charms of the movie is actually figuring out whether his allegations were, in fact correct and he really was a CIA agent that murdered people to protect the United States.

Of course it all sounds like 100% bullshit and the CIA's outright denial of him ever working for them doesn't work in his favor, that's not to say they've been completely honest about everything before.

Or it could all be the delusions of a man who, feeling that he's added nothing worthwhile to Earth with his low-brow game shows, concocted this story himself of being this CIA agent murdering America's enemies to sort of fulfill his own dreams and feeling that he actually did something worthwhile with his time on this Earth.

And this is a theme that the movie touches all throughout, what man dreams his life will be like versus what he actually ends up doing which, almost in all cases, doesn't end up coming close to what his dreams were.

So it's definitely a more complex movie than you'd figure going on. Of course the movie manages to do all this while at the same time being a very entertaining film. If you choose to take the story at face value then that's fine because the movie is also perfectly watchable if you don't want to think too much.

Of course I don't think that was the purpose of the film, but if that's how it came out what can you do? As mentioned, Sam Rockwell is excellent as Chuck Barris. Sam is always a guy who works his hardest no matter what role he's playing and this is no different.

Drew Barrymore is very charming as Penny. And George Clooney is also pretty damn good. So the cast is all around excellent. And the cameos by Brad Pitt and Matt Damon (both in the same Dating Game scene) without saying ANYTHING was funny and a clever way to feature the two without it feeling like it's a vanity thing for Clooney or either of the guys.

The one thing I really didn't like was how they featured interviews with several people from Chuck's life, mostly people who worked with him. Granted a lot of the stuff they said then lead directly to an important scene in the film, but I don't know it just felt weird.

Especially how the interviews played out visually. I don't even know how to describe it quite frankly, but it looked kind of cheap. I think it mostly played out in a clever ending, when after the movie is over, they're getting ready to interview the real Chuck and just as the interview is about to start the screen freezes, they show Chuck's name and who he is and the movie ends.

I thought it was pretty cool for an ending and I guess they had to show interviews of those people in order for that ending to make sense, but, as mentioned, it didn't work entirely in my opinion.

Other than that this is an excellent movie with a fascinating story about a very complex individual.