Con Artists: The Role Of Flim-Flam On Film

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In film, a confidence artist is charisma personified. They do not need violence, technology, or even stealth to steal. They use their words like big boys and girls. A con artist's dialogue unlocks doors and disarms guards. It is beguiling, irresistible to a marked character. When an obstacle in a movie is human, the con artist moves them -- both physically and emotionally. They are written to be compulsive liars that make their targets believe what they want to believe. Their targets desire this belief. Even when they tell the truth, the con artist deceives. Frequently, the con artist character is somewhat self-aware. They wink to the camera, and their personality oozes out of the film. The con artist turns to the camera and tells the audience, "Keep lying, my friends."

However, the concept of an impossibly successful trickster can seem contrived at times. A great deal of deception works on sentiment. In a movie, the motivations of the characters are coordinated by filmmakers. Coercion by a con artist comes off as coincidental and convenient when the outcome is predetermined by writers, actors, and directors. In these instances, the con artist is a mechanical part of a criminal plot and a story structure. A problem develops, and a con artist solves it to keep the plot moving.

In some cases, filmmakers understand the problem of convenience. They create stories that use the strengths of con artists as weaknesses. At other times, the filmmakers recognize this issue by drawing the audience into the story and making them the mark in the game.

A movie con artist's success, both in a film and out, relies on believability. Do they believe in themselves? Does the mark believe? Most importantly, does the audience believe?

Look down. Have I charmed your pants off, yet?

The essence of a con artist is someone who know what they want and how to make other people give it to them. They engage a target, or mark, in a bit of manipulation known as a confidence game. The con artist "plays" with their mark to make themselves seem trustworthy. They then leverage this trust into coercion of and action by the mark, delivering a prize and betraying the trust.

In a film, a likable con artist character has a built in trustworthiness. As a protagonist, the con artist is the focus of the movie and has a certain credibility from this status. The convenience of their con games derives from their inherent purpose as the hero of the film. Again, the plot of a heist movie is dependent on the hero con artist eventually succeeding in some fashion. Most commonly, a con artist character's fundamental success and trustworthiness is communicated through their swagger. They are bold, confident, and appealing.

One such movie character that caricatures this archetypal con artist is Templeton "Faceman" Peck from The A-Team (both the 1983-1987 television series and 2010 film). Faceman is a master of human intelligence (HumInt), capable of securing information and materials from a variety of contacts with little effort. Due to the length restraints of a weekly television show and a feature length film, Faceman's games happen rapid fire, his marks flip easily, and the payoff comes quickly.

In the 2010 film, Faceman (Bradley Cooper) is introduced as a suave, womanizing operator attempting to realize his limits and abilities. Barring some early failures involving corrupt officials and piles of tires, Faceman soon gains the ability to activate most people (except his ex-fiancé) as if flipping a switch. This power is never explained in the movie except that he has a charming personality and a winning smile.

Depending on tolerance, an audience buys his successes and failures as a con artist based on his grating charm. He makes a French reporter and a nurse giggle. He even manages to build a pleasure palace in prison with the full consent of his guards. The simplicity of his game is that his marks want to help him. They know Faceman is lying, but they go along with the plan because of his charisma. In this regard, he is like James Bond. Whereas James Bond declares himself a spy by introducing himself in his traditional, punctuated manner, Faceman announces himself as a liar, and people fall at his feet to believe. This rush to belief comes from plot necessity.

Even his enemies are too willing to become part of his plan. The biggest game that Faceman pulls is a familiar con game of distraction at the Los Angeles Docks. His set up to the game is ridiculous to a fault by design of the filmmakers. By the big game, the filmmakers hope that the audience trusts Faceman. So goes the audience, so go the villains in the movie. He plays a classic cup and ball game involving cranes, remote controlled cars, and explosions. This game is essential to advancing the plot and its absurdity uses the necessity of such an event as a fireworks spectacular. It is the second 2010 film to do so at the Port of Los Angeles.

It is all Smiles and Sunshine until someone ends up dead.

Other filmmakers are not as blatant in their recognition of the convenience of con artists as The A-Team. They attempt a slightly more subtle way to communicate the pitfalls of making a career of criminal deception. One of these ways is through the con artist failing miserably in their respective film. A con artist's failure is one of belief. A large amount of a con artist's work relies on a mark's personality. Filmmakers maintain the audience's level of belief while having a movie mark's belief fall. They hope that increasing realism cause an audience's captivation to follow.

For example, in the 1967 Irvin Kershner film The Flim-Flam Man, Mordecai C. Jones (George C. Scott) takes a younger man as his partner and apprentice. They pull fake lottery scams and partner games such as the ubiquitous "Fiddle" (if you remember the costume jewelry flashback with Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin from Zombieland, you know a variation of the "Fiddle"). Mordecai demonstrates and explains that marks believe they have the upper hand in a game. This belief is essential to building trust as it is easier to trust someone if you think you have the advantage. This form of confidence game relies on greed or vanity. Mordecai warns that a con game fails when the belief is broken and the mark feels they lose the advantage. Sure enough, Mordecai and his accomplice are arrested when trust and belief are breached prematurely due to romantic entanglement. It is like The Music Man but with less singing.

Another way that movie con artists can fail is to be out charmed by their mark. This case is rare in film and is an intriguing solution to the convenience of a con artist's guile -- confront the convenience with more convenience. This form transforms a con artist's best abilities into deficiencies.

In the 1955 film The Ladykillers, Professor Marcus (Alec Guinness) and his gang target an elderly woman for specific traits that later prove to be their downfall. Marcus approaches the elderly Mrs. Wilberforce due to her discretion, politeness, and honesty. He rents a space from her to use as a base of operations for a bank car heist at King's Cross in London. He and his gang pretend to be a string quartet and prey on her compassion. When her trust and belief in the gang is broken, she becomes a threat to them. Professor Marcus and his team of criminals decide to deal with her harshly. They cannot. The very traits that make her an ideal mark make her an ideal counter to any con artist with a shred of humanity. Her convenience in the game proved to be a major inconvenience to the con artist in the overall story.

Standing around and eating are important traits of a con artist.

With this discussion of the believability of movie con artists, the underlying question is whether or not an audience member would fall for such a trick? Would you succumb to the smug, smirking charm of The A-Team's Faceman? In all likelihood, the answer is a firm no. You are too smart to fall for such simple parlor tricks. However, there is an old adage in the intelligence community: "It is easier to fool a smart person than a stupid one." A smart person crafts their own lies around the original one. A less smart person asks too many questions because they cannot. So, the question posed to you is: Are you too smart to be tricked by a movie?

This question presents another way filmmakers can deal with the convenience problem of movie con artists. They attempt to draw the audience into the game. They become the con artist and make the audience their mark.

A tremendous deal of a movie con artist's plans are revealed to the audience. It is a wink that includes the watcher in on the gag or game. An audience member watches the entire time, similar to Faceman's cup and ball game. Still, there is the possibility that they miss the switch. The entire plot is elaborated to an audience, and they believe the set up. They trust the filmmaker to present accurate information about the plot through their characters. The filmmakers use this trust to craft a trick ending in a reveal. Sometimes they squander the trust on a non-sequitur M. Night Shyamalanian twist. Sometimes they leave adequate clues denoting their trick and the deception is comparable to an actual con artist's distraction and deception. You were watching one hand instead of the other.

One of these overarching con games exists in the Steven Soderberg's 2001 film Ocean's Eleven. In the film, Danny Ocean (George Clooney) and Rusty Ryan (Brad Pitt) concoct a plan to rob the Bellagio, The Mirage, and MGM Grand Casinos in Las Vegas on the same night. They assemble a team and attempt to break the security of the casinos by deceiving the owner Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia). The characters explicitly state their roles in heist, except Rusty. Each one of Ocean's Eleven has a specialized task to fulfill. They plan, rehearse, and even engage in the heist in plain view of the audience. Nevertheless, this heist is not the full story. The filmmakers reveal what they hinted in the first run through of events. To emphasize their cleverness, they step back in the movie and show what actually happened. You watch Danny Ocean while the heist hinged on Rusty Ryan.

An issue with this form of deception is a character is held in reserve for much of the movie. He seems to be doing nothing but is actually giving broad nods and winks to the audience. In Ocean's Eleven, Rusty Ryan seems to stand around doing nothing but wear expensive suits, look handsome, and occasionally eat something. He gives support to the other characters but not to a level concurrent with being Brad Pitt. In reality, he is engineering the secondary heist. He is hiding in plain sight, but there are no overt indications of this fact.

Munch your may to millions.

Taking this concept of hiding in plain sight to another level is Fast Five's Han. Without mentioning whether there is or is not a twist ending to the film's heist, Han stands around much like Rusty. He is a member of Dominic Toretto's crew in Rio de Janeiro. Dominic Toretto introduces Han as a man who can blend in anywhere. He is the charmer of the group, the "faceman." For much of the film, Han wears expensive clothing and eats bags of potato chips. He is called on only once to fulfill his purpose and get an important hand print. Han gets someone else to do it. He stands by and eats a bag of chips. Han does next to nothing for most of the movie but reaps the same reward as all the other characters.

He is the ultimate movie con artist in that he creates a pocket of comfort around himself. Everyone else does his bidding without realizing it. Some may say Han's lack of activity is due to the patchwork nature of Fast Five's plot. Is it? Or is Han the most charismatic character ever? Can you make people hand you millions of dollars by standing around, eating potato chips? If so, want to trade places?