Confessions
Of A Dangerous Mind (2002)
spy comedy
directed
by : George Clooney
featuring
: Sam Rockwell - Drew Barrymore - George Clooney - Julia Roberts - Rutger
Hauer
running
time : 1 hour 53 minutes
Chuck Barris is best known to most Americans
as the guy who used to host The Gong Show. He was also the creator and
producer of The Dating Game, The Newlywed Game, and a handful of other
successful game shows in the 1960s and 1970s. But was he also a hired killer
working with the CIA? That's the take-it-or-leave-it premise of Confessions
Of A Dangerous Mind, based on the memoir of the same name by Barris. Barris
(Sam Rockwell) grows up dreaming of success in show biz and winning the
hearts of beautiful women, but early on, he meets with plenty of resistance
from both women and the television industry, despite writing the hit tune
"Palisades Park" and scoring a job with Dick Clark on American Bandstand.
The 1960s proves more fortunate for Barris; he meets the love of his life,
Penny (Drew Barrymore), and sells ABC on the idea of The Dating Game. However,
after the show has made him wealthy and successful, Barris is approached
by the mysterious Jim Byrd (George Clooney), a CIA agent who wants to recruit
Barris as a covert operative. Barris finds the notion of playing spy games
intriguing and agrees, but soon discovers what Byrd and his partners really
want is for Barris to assassinate uncooperative figures around the world.
Soon, Barris finds that his life has been all but taken over by Byrd and
another CIA agent, the mysterious and sexy Patricia (Julia Roberts). As
he hops the globe killing people in the name of American security, Barris
learns that the KGB has discovered his not-so-little secret and that his
own life is in great danger. Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind marked the
directorial debut of actor George Clooney, working from a screenplay adapted
by Charlie Kaufman from Barris's book. Clark, Dating Game host Jim Lange,
frequent Gong Show panelist Jaye P.Morgan, and Gene Patton appear as themselves.
Clooney shows the necessary skills
to maintain a career as a director with Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind.
He has a quirky, unconventional eye that certainly suits the material and
manages to be confident without being too showy -- he never loses sight
of why he is going to the occasional visual extreme. Less surprisingly,
Clooney has a sure hand with his actors. Rockwell is outstanding as Barris,
managing to make the audience relate to him both through his excellent
evocation of the real man and through a natural charm that feels like a
combination of character and actor. This is the kind of performance that
gets an actor years of steady work. Barrymore is her usual winning self
as the long-suffering girlfriend of the main character, Clooney himself
does subtle acting work, and Roberts is genuinely interesting as the femme
fatale. The only major fault lies in the story itself. While it is fun
to guess if Barris' claim that he was a CIA agent is genuine, the film
takes at face value that it did happen. That leads to a dramatically slow
second half where the novelty has worn off and the story grows repetitive
with Barris' cycle of assassination, game show work, relationship troubles,
self-doubt, assassination, becoming a let down after the hilarious rush
of the film's first hour. That said, the film is never less than watchable,
and any film that contains a womanizing main character being confronted
about his existential doubt by a nude woman in a pool at the Playboy mansion
grotto has its heart and sense of humor in the right place.