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Rating: Country: USA Release Date: September 15, 2009 Distributor: First Run Features Director: · Todd Robbins Cast: · Todd Robbins Related Sites: · Find out more about Todd Robbins at his official website! · And check out other fine offerings from First Run Features! Grade: C

I'm a big fan of the TNT show Leverage. If you haven't seen it yet, find the first season on DVD. It follows the exploits of a team of thieves, each bringing unique skills to the group. The crew is lead by a former insurance fraud investigator named Nathan Ford, played by Timothy Hutton, who has history with each of the other members. Realizing that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, the team, sometimes reluctantly, uses their skills to help people being screwed over by people or companies with the lawyers, money or power to get whatever they want from those who have no hope of beating them. It carries on the tried and true formula of The A-Team in terms of creative and resourceful heroes of questionable backgrounds pulling cons on superior foes to help the helpless.

Ultimately, I just love a good con job.

Which brings me to "The Modern Conman Collection," a three-DVD set from First Run Features. Professional trickster Todd Robbins is a likable guy who could easily play the role of a relative to Hutton's Nathan Ford character. He's an unassuming and disarmingly charming fellow, who seems to be the sort who could put strangers at easy right away. That's probably the best trait a conman could have -- setting up the mark (the target of the scam) to not even realize that a simple notion is the set-up for a swindle. Each of the three DVDs in the set are themed, focusing on the art of "proposition bets" in bars, at the card table, or at the office. Of the three disks, the bar scams are probably the most useful and the least likely to get you beat up or fired. There are a number of clever verbal prompts that disguise the gag, and someone who is feeling relaxed after a couple of drinks may be more susceptible to these tricks. There are a few simple techniques to master, but the most important one is simply confidence. Robbins exudes it throughout. He may play the fool to build up the mark, but in truth he's set them up already. Whether the bet be for drinks, food or money, Robbins has a variety of scams that are guaranteed to pay off if you're confident enough in your pitch to get the mark to bite and take the bet.

I was recently celebrating with friends in an Irish bar in downtown St. Louis. There was a (presumably actual) Irishman who came up to me and said he had a bet for me. Having just watched the DVDs I knew what he was about, and told him so, but I humored him to get a laugh for my party. Here's the bet:

"I bet you $100 against your $50 that if we put both bets on the floor and you stood right on top of the money, I can get you to step off of the money. I won't touch you or do anything in any way to compel you to move; you'll do it all on your own. If you stay on the money, you keep the $100. If you step off of the money, I keep your $50."

"So it's my $50 to your $100, and you won't touch me or throw a beer at me or anything?"

"Aye. I'll not touch you or do anything to you in any way to make you move off of the money."

"Okay. Let's do it."

For the purpose of this bet, since we established that this was just a demonstration, we pretended to place the money on the floor, using a couple of napkins with the denominations written on them. I stood on each napkin, one under each foot.

"So you're standing on the money. Are you ready to step off and lose your $50 yet?"

"Not a bit."

"Okay, here's what I'm going to do. I'm not going to touch you in any way, but I'm going to make you step off the money."

"You can try."

"Oh aye, I'll do better than that. All I'm going to do is walk around three times."

"Without touching?" "That's what I said, right? Ready? Here we go."

He walked around me once and asked how many that was. "One," I replied. He walked around again and asked how many laps it was that time. "Two," I said.

"Okay then. I'll be back tomorrow to finish that third lap."

And with that he went back to his seat at the bar. My party got a good laugh out of it. I bought the Irishman a beer for his efforts, so if nothing else he earned that one from me. But you see the point: unless you're ridiculously stubborn, you're going to have to go to the bathroom at some point or the bar will close and kick you out. Ultimately you are going to fail the bet before the conman gets around to walking that third lap.

These are the sorts of gags that Robbins demonstrates here. Some of them are pretty funny, and probably worth pulling out of your own bag of tricks every now and then. Some of them fall a little flat. And depending on your mark, some of them could get you hurt. I don't think you'd want to try some of these on the rough and tough biker, pimp, or the guy with the prison tattoo that reads, "Pelican Bay '92-'09."

The Poker Night Games disk involves card tricks. Some of them require a partner, and Robbins employs a pretty female accomplice to throw off suspicion. The card tricks aren't "magic" tricks, but more like the proposition bets demonstrated in the Bar Scams disc. "I bet you $100 that..." is usually how they start. On the whole, these tricks require a little more set-up, a bit of planning, and in my opinion a bunch of pretty bad poker players. If you watch the World Poker Tour, you know that a lot of good players fold their hands even if their opponents have lesser cards. They play cautious. Cautious card sharps aren't likely going to fall for these sucker bets. So unless you have a casual and friendly game to try a few of these out on, you probably won't get a lot of utility out of the card game cons.

The third disk features Workplace Pranks, and were by and large irrelevant. In the current economic climate, you better have a really fun, carefree workplace to pull pranks in or you'll find yourself unemployed. And they were largely just pranks, sprinkled with a few bets. Betting is grounds for instant termination at a lot of companies. I don't have much else to say on the third disk, and I really don't think Robbins did either.

There is a short bio of Todd Robbins on each disk's Special Features, as well as a couple of tricks that didn't make the cut for whatever reason and a preview of the next disk in the series, but none of it is particularly memorable.

I was a bit disappointed that something called "The Modern Conman Collection" wasn't an exploration of new and classic cons on the scope of what I enjoy on Leverage. I suppose schemes of that nature aren't the sort of thing law enforcement would appreciate having "how-to" DVDs of. "The Modern Conman Collection" doesn't instruct you on how to do anything illegal; it simply shows you how to trick folks who (in most cases, and hopefully not at work) may be easily fooled under the influence of alcohol. The pub tricks might come in handy at now and then, but the other two disks won't get most people very far.