Reviewed by

Christopher Armstead

I’m sure at some time you’ve been channel surfing and flashed past Univision or Telemundo and saw those Mexican soap operas playing and just stayed on that channel watching them for a couple minutes, wishing like hell you could speak Spanish so you could understand what in the world is going on. The women in these shows are all beautiful and are dressed wildly inappropriately and everybody is always yelling at other, I just don’t know why everybody is always yelling at each other. When I was much younger I used to watch these soap operas because I knew the Iris Chacon show was coming on afterwards and I certainly didn’t want to miss that, but that’s another story. The point is I’m thinking this movie here, ‘The Confidant’, is probably very similar to those Mexican Soap operas as it features a lot of beautiful women, most of them dressed inappropriately, and people yell at each other a lot. And even though they were speaking perfect English in this movie, those Mexican soap operas I couldn’t make heads or tails of back in the day still probably made more sense.

Nigel (Boris Kodjoe) and Eden (Kenya Moore) are young and in love. Just to keep things fresh they often role play with Nigel playing the john and Eden playing the whore. Right off the bat I should alert you that it’s going to be kind of difficult for me to be too terribly hard on this movie considering we’d be excited just watching Kenya Moore read the newspaper. Here we have Ms. Moore pretending to be whore, taking bubble baths, going for long leisurely swims and engaging in drug induced threesomes. I am at a critical disadvantage.

Regardless, all Eden really wants is a baby to close the circle of her family, a baby that tragically would never come. As sad as this is, a more pressing matter is that Nigel’s best friend from childhood, Daniel (David Banner), is getting out of jail after an pulling a dime plus one. Apparently Daniel took the fall after Nigel stabbed a guy he robbed in a card game. Nigel was about to be drafted into the NFL and had a future so for this stupid reason Daniel copped to the crime. This is like the sixth movie I’ve seen where Boris Kodjoe has played some kind of ex-athlete. We also noticed that the young

Nigel in flashback was wearing University of Michigan gear. We know that Kenya Moore, who produced this film, is a Detroit native and was probably throwing out some much needed local love but I can tell you that a Michigan Man wouldn’t stab a guy in an alley. A Buckeye would, but not a Michigan Man. Anyway, while Daniel was in the joint Nigel never wrote or visited which has Daniel mighty angry and has clearly made him mighty crazy.

Nigel, who is a complete and total asshole in this movie in addition to having a gambling problem, at least feels a little bad that he neglected poor Daniel and invites him to move into his mansion with he and his depressed wife. Worst idea ever. Daniel proceeds to murder the stupid maid, play peeping tom on Eden, have lots of sex with his girlfriend (Camila Alves) with the door open so the depressed wife can observe and eventually drug the depressed wife into the aforementioned threesome. Nigel for his part is trying to find a bunch of money to pay this Chinese Mobstress (Bai Ling) who has threatened to kill him and his woman if he doesn’t cough up the cash, leaving the man with few options and finally forcing him to come face to face with his assholery. And then things start getting really getting crazy.

As a work of cinema we have to tell you that ‘The Confidant’, written and directed by Alton Glass, is a complete mess of a movie so filled with befuddling, head scratching events that it really has to be experienced firsthand. Daniel bursts through a plate glass window to kill the stupid maid who probably should’ve just called the police when she learned her life was in danger, but I was thinking that Daniel is going to have hard time explaining that shattered plate glass window that coincided with the disappearing maid. Actually he wouldn’t because apparently broken plate glass windows are a common occurrence in Southern California. Speaking of Southern California, one has to wonder how Daniel killed a guy in Michigan, went to jail in Michigan but somehow got released in SoCal. Or one just rolls with it which is what I recommend. While we appreciate a good friend who takes the rap for something he did not do, if there’s a dead guy in the street and the people around this dead guy is just me and you, if we both just leave, as opposed to having a long drawn out conversation while standing over this dead guy about ‘taking the rap’, then neither of us have to take the rap, correct? There is so much more utter nonsense in this movie that connecting the dots in any kind of logical way is going to be damn near impossible.

But here’s the thing. While ‘The Confidant’ is indeed a total mess it was still wildly entertaining. At least it was to me. Yes, it might not be sure where it’s going most of the time but it sure does get there in a hurry which means that ‘The Confidant’ should never bore you. Boris Kodjoe has undeniable screen presence, Kenya Moore in undeniably beautiful and David Banner is undeniably crazy, not to mention that Bai Ling, Billy Zane and Richard Roundtree show up in this movie along with lots and lots of titties. While that might not be a solid basis for coherence it is a solid foundation for entertainment. You know it is.

Seriously, if Alton Glass could’ve just tightened up and streamlined his narrative just a little bit while leaving in all the other good stuff we just mentioned ‘The Confidant’ would’ve been a trashy good movie as opposed to a trashy bad movie which still found a way to entertain despite itself.