Although I did give this film a high rating, I was unsatisfied with the ending.

Jack (Matthew Lillard) is a slick con artist who drops in on Max (Vincent D'Onofrio) and Jamie (Valerina Golino),two small time crooks and wannabe con artists. You can tell pretty early on from quick flashbacks that most of what he says is a bunch of lies (don't worry, that's not a spoiler - they make that very clear in the first twenty minutes of the movie). He needs their help to carry out an illegal transaction, something which they have never done before. Max, a raging hot head, looks down his nose at Jack, but Jamie realizes that with their financial troubles, they don't have much of a choice.

All three lead characters give terrific performances as low life criminals, and Lillard is better in this film than I have ever seen him before. Golino, who I am not familiar with, and the always excellent D'Onofrio are great as a paranoid couple. The characters may seem too shallow for some, but they required a great deal of intensity that I doubt most A-list actors could muster, especially D'Onofrio's borderline-psychotic Max.

Here are the spoilers.

I enjoyed the movie, but I thought the ending was a bit unrealistic and predictable. Not bad, mind you - it was ok. But Jack just drops in as a mysterious lying stranger, and you can tell that he will most likely win in the end; you've never seen a film quite this odd before, and yet, it still seems cliche` somehow. Jack was also a tad bit on the slimy, spineless side, and Jamie and Max's paranoia seems like it would have been assets to them rather than hindrances. The fight scene at the end was also poorly choreographed and hard to swallow - Lillard simply can't look as mean and tough as D'Onofrio, not to mention that D'Onofrio's character was meaner as well.

Aside from this, it is worth renting if you are into violent movies with plot twists.

I really like Vincent Donofrio, but his movie choices are uniformly bad. The only decent things he's ever been in are Full Metal Jacket and Law And Order - Criminal Intent.

This movie starts off slow and then slumps off from there. Ridiculous characters, implausible behavior, clichéd performances, stupid story. It's all there, all the problems any film can have, all in one place. They should use this as a teaching tool in Film School: coursename = 'How Not To Make a Movie' , and a companion course: 'How To Ruin The Careers Of Actors Who May Actually Have Some Talent'.

Don't waste your time, life is too short and each hour is precious...

Wow, I can't believe i'm the first and only one to post a comment on this great movie.

Although the movie itself seemed interesting enough the real thing that attracted me to this one is Matt lillard, granted most people probably either think he's too caffeine happy or just plain sucks but we're both the same age and from the same generation and i've watched this guy so many times that he's one of my favorites now. This is one of the few movies where he is the big shot and main star kind of like in SLC Punk, another great Lillard film.

Baiscally this is storywise your usual heist movies but with more twists than anything, which start to amount to craziness. Also very notable in this movie is another great actor named vincent D'onofrio, a very under appreciated person in the film industry. The woman in the movie is a newcomer and she isn't too bad although you know they hired her mainly for her accent and the nude scene =)

It's a game of jack vs jill vs bob as each want to reap the rewards but share with no one. They all try to get eachother to kill off the other and it's a timebomb waiting to explode. Matt shows his true prowess as the scheming JAck who initially starts the whole scheme. Vincent and woman play a couple of art thieves who are in need of money due to a lack of business. Vince's character is a bit deranged and skitz's throughout the movie but that only add to the intensity of the film.

The surprises left and right are well welcomed and the ending is very non cliche and makes you feel happy, well maybe that depends on the type of endings you like. This movie kept me very interested besides the fact Matt was in it, it's a great movie and i'd highly recommend it to anyone who likes movies. Critic's probably won't like this movie, but they don't watch movies cause they like movies anyway.