Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

2002 "Some things are better left top secret."
7| 1h53m| R| en| More Info
Released: 31 December 2002 Released
Producted By: Miramax
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
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Synopsis

Television made him famous, but his biggest hits happened off screen. Television producer by day, CIA assassin by night, Chuck Barris was recruited by the CIA at the height of his TV career and trained to become a covert operative. Or so Barris said.

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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
Anthony Iessi Chuck Barris, the host of the infamous Gong Show, wrote a book long ago in which he claims that he moonlighted as a CIA assassin overseas. Yeah, I call shenanigans. Knowing who Chuck is through glimpses of Gong Show reruns, and his apparent addiction to women, he seems like a full-blown sociopath. But man, what a story he tells. Hell, I'd make a movie out of it too if given the chance. Charlie Kaufman is the scribe to this interesting film, and we see a bright portion of his mad genius in quite a few sections of the film. The final scenes of the film really highlight his fantastic surrealism. Yet, the potential of his script gets squashed by it's director, George Clooney. The Hollywood golden-boy's first foray into directing a film, and he makes sure to gussy it up with as many celebrities as he can squeeze in, and an EXTREMELY overexposed image quality. This movie is desperate to be Kaufman, but is forced through the Clooney machine. So what we get, is a great idea, watered down. But out of the many problems the film has, the brightest spot of the whole thing, other than it's great script, is Sam Rockwell as Chuck Barris. He gives a nearly flawless portrayal of him. It's scary how uncanny he is to him.
SnoopyStyle George Clooney doesn't have the visual imaginations of a great director. He does a competent job. The best thing he does is to point the camera at Sam Rockwell. Sam rocks out on this crazy story.Chuck Barris (Sam Rockwell) is a liar, womanizer, schemer, TV producer, and a CIA trained assassin. The first on the list is the most important one of them all. Based on his book and Charlie Kaufman's screenplay, it goes into some less than believable parts of Barris' life. Although Kaufman's script was changed by Clooney. CK's version would probably be too daring for Clooney's amateur hands.This is good starting point for an actor doing directing. It doesn't have a sharp interesting point of view. It does work as a platform for Sam Rockwell.
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.