Clarissa Mora The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Delight Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

Dennis Littrell As I was watching this expecting not too much and a bit distracted I was wondering vaguely how this managed to get such a good cast. Surprisingly the movie surprised. This a fine example of the "hit man" genre infused with comedy. Yes, they made yet another hit man movie…I mean let's glorify the poor bast…guys. So, so Hollywood. I actually Googled "hit man movies" and I was really, really surprised at how many there have been. I've seen maybe a half dozen, and if I feel like making the effort I'll look them up and make a list.But this movie creates another genre: the hit man comedy. "Leon: The Professional" (1994) and "Panic" (2000) gave us the hit man we can identify with and empathize with while experiencing a little satirical intent along the way. But this expands the possibilities. I mean the hit man is Chuck Barris (oh, boy) of "The Gong Show" fame and infamy played by Sam Rockwell as the heroic flawed hero. (Story based on Barris's own book. Ha!) And how did the director get such a great cast? I mean George Clooney, Drew Barrymore, Julia Roberts and Sam Rockwell. Answer: George Clooney directed a script by Charlie Kaufman. Yes, Clooney was the director and did an outstanding job; and yes, Charlie Kaufman is the author of screenplays for such cutting edge and entirely original films as "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (2004) and "Being John Malkovich" (1999).So yes I would be persuaded to take a role and not worry about the box office. BTW there are some interesting cameos including Brad Pitt and Matt Damon as The Dating Game contestants. They appear almost as sight jokes.--Dennis Littrell, author of the movie review book, "Cut to the Chaise Lounge, or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote"

Python Hyena Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002): Dir: George Clooney / Cast: Sam Rockwell, Drew Barrymore, George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Rutger Hauer: Remarkable debut for director George Clooney in a film about the secret lives we hide. It regards game show host Chuck Berry brought in by a government agent that trains people to kill. Berry is best known as the creator of The Gong Show and The Dating Game. Sam Rockwell is inspired casting as Berry bringing out the frustration and paranoia. Clooney casts himself as an ominous contact. Drew Barrymore is charming as Berry's patient girlfriend who awaits outside his door for his emerged humanity but finds nothing but a hallow shell of who he was. Julia Roberts is icy and controlling delivering one of her best performances. She is given a great sequence where Berry must figure her out on the spot and out maneuver her. Rutger Hauer makes an effective appearance as a German-American Spy who befriends Chuck. Tracking Berry's life from 1940's to 1981 mixing comedy and suspense and tense drama. He will stand unshaven reflecting his complications while the woman he loves awaits outside but all contact and love is gone leaving her with no choice but to walk away from his double life. On one side he wanted to express his ideas and entertain. On the other side he pulled the trigger and looked over his shoulder ever since. Score: 10 / 10

lasttimeisaw I have no idea who Chuck Barry is, but I guess I should not miss Mr. Clooney's director debut, furthermore Charlie Kaufman is billed as the screen writer, so the premise looks rosy. The film kicks off with a self-inspective unreeling of Chuck's life-long hustle and bustle jostling with his TV show-runner identity and a clandestine CIA assassin, interspersing with black & white snippets of interviews with people who know Chuck in the real life (but mostly are pithy sound-bites whose only purpose is to mystify his personage), occasionally the film switches into an over-saturated, over-exposed hue which may engender some hallucinatory reverberation, since the most obvious selling point is the enthralling double life scenario and leaving all the traces which could be siphoned (by viewers) to make one's own judgment whether it is plain fictional or not. But the ramifications are as much ambiguous as what George Clooney (an exemplar of the mainstream Hollywood mindset) wants us to believe, it does manage to shape a believe-it- or-despise-it logjam and according to the film's depiction, Chuck Barry is nothing but a pipsqueak (there is no reference of any flair in his ascending in the show business), a lunatic has a very troubled mental state (a dreadful imagination of someone is going to finish him off), a repellent womanizer/sex-addict has big commitment issues if we simply remove the " hit-man" halo, so from which one could imply is that the "other identity" suits well to rationalize his personal mire, it is his last straw, but from the eyes of an audience, it flunks by blatantly over-beautifying the double-identity situation, I never feel the frisson albeit the film is being cunningly shot in a retro-redolent grain, with a friendly comic tone and lively interactions between the cinematography and the editing, plus an ace soundtrack with the trademark of its time. But pitifully Charlie Kaufman's script doesn't have too much to bite. The biographic nature demands a wider range of chronicle, which may also be the Achilles heel of the genre, without zooming in any enhanced center-pieces, everything runs episodic, leaving no instant aftertaste at all to be amazed and appreciated. All sidekicks are come-and- go (with Drew Barrymore and Julia Roberts the female auxiliaries have longer stints, both equally awful I must say, Barrymore doesn't age at all along a two-decades span which is so dragging viewers out of the picture), the sole comic relief is the performance from Sam Rockwell, who was largely unknown at that time and overlooked by the awards season (a SILVER BERLIN BEAR for BEST ACTOR is his only trophy), his panache proffers the vitality of the film against its slightly mind-bogging narrative tempo, also his personal charisma transcends his character, and sublimates his character Chuck, a connection has been substantially built across the screen, a triumphant achievement in deed. Rutger Hauer, a fellow assassin, said in the film "killing my first man (in the WWII) is like making love with my first woman", which strikes a chord with my previous argument in DR. STRANGELOVE (1964, 8/10), war and killing may truly be the by-product of heterosexual men's hegemony in the society, if actually the raving stupidity germinates from the biologic impulse, along with evolution, let us hope a less macho but peaceful world is ahead of us.

secondtake Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002)Like the better known George Clooney directed film, Good Night, and Good Luck, this one is about the early days of television. But the similarity ends there. Filmed in color, with a second story about the CIA, and sometimes inventive filming moving from one space to another freely, or showing fantasies that get confused with the truth. Confessions almost feels like a crazy dream. And a good one, an interesting tour of a man's off-kilter mind finding escapes in brilliant flashes of success. And the writing is by the great Charlie Kaufman, which is reason enough to get involved.The period is great (1960s and 70s), laced with the Cold War and peripheral drug use, and lots of bright colors. "The Dating Game" gets started on hippy-esquire t.v. sets and then suddenly we see a gruesome assassination, making for a wild ride. And there is a star-studded cast, with Julia Roberts prominent and Brad Pitt and Matt Damon definitely not prominent (but their two seconds making maybe the best single moment in the movie). The intrigue compounds when our leading man, a very non-fictional Chuck Barris, becomes a target himself.The lead, Sam Rockwell, has the problem for me of not creating a sympathetic character, so when things go wrong, and even when things go right, he seems like a jerk, and I couldn't quite get absorbed in it. Instead, everything just "happens." But such things! Could they be true? The movie is based on Barris's autobiography of the same name, and yet the CIA denies Barris had anything to do with them. Good stuff for a surreal, bouncy movie, anyway. No strait jacket required.