Reptileenbu Did you people see the same film I saw?

Numerootno A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

Rexanne It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

grantss Chuck Barris is a successful TV producer and presenter. Behind this façade lurks a secret - he is a CIA assassin.George Clooney's directorial debut, and it's a great one. (Also worth noting that the screenplay was written by Charlie Kaufman, of Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Adaptation fame). Excellent movie, mixing humour and drama. Plot is superb - you're kept guessing at what is real and what is not, and where it all will lead. The movie, however, is made by the acting of Sam Rockwell. His performance is mind-blowingly brilliant.

Omega One True story or not, it sure does its part of amusing the audience. A light movie overall. It surely is a try to put a lot into a single movie and run the blender. Even though there is a lot of places in the movie where it will raise questions in your mind which will question the realism of the movie, it still is a refreshing one. We have a lot of spy movies out there in the industry but this sure qualifies as a different one. The story revolves around a lot of stuffs going on in the same time and may confuse you sometimes. In summary its a story about a young man who wants it all. He takes what ever is thrown towards him, good or bad and tries to be successful in life. As the part of takeaway from the movie, there is not much but entertainment.

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.

p-stepien From the man who created such revolutionary concepts as "Date Game", "The Gong Show" and "The Newlywed Game", the predecessors to modern-day exploitational reality TV shows, comes "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind", the autobiography of Chuck Barris (Sam Rockwell). Behind the facade of a the sexually crazed game-show producer / host lies something way more devious: a ruthless CIA contract killer...In his debut George Clooney shows immense promise, a well-trained eye and countless intuition. Due to the gross uncertainty regarding Chuck Barris's self-proclaimed CIA involvement, Clooney uses outtakes from interviews with various people who worked with him in the past in order to instill an atmosphere of uncertainty regarding the autobiographical truth. Using outdated lensing he also manages to transport the cinematographic feel of the times and help viewers immerse into the whacked out reality presented by Barris - an uncertain grainy world. Was he a spy or not? The answer will probably not be known for many years, if ever. The biggest fault however seems to be the overly cheeky, going for slightly over-scaled humour instead of analysis. Also detrimental is the apparent focus on the CIA-life of Barris and less on the mind of a person, who changed game-shows and television forever. Despite some admirable qualities Charlie Kaufman's script jokingly ventures too far into the obscurity of the CIA operative spy-scene (which at the same time underdeveloped and chaotic), leaving the drama hanging. Also a movie for true fans of "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" with adorable, albeit superfluous guest appearances from Matt Damon, Kevin Bacon or Maggie Gyllenhaal.