I have to believe the negative reviews are from people that hate Minkow, and therefor have to hate the film by some weird transitivity process. He is a monumental scumbag, and this film was partly financed with money Minkow conned from his church. The delightful thing is the postmodern nature of the movie. The A-list actors and Minkow playing his older self were shot and in the can. Then in post, the producers found out Minkow was not only doing a "short and distort" scam after getting out of prison, and then, to top it off, he scammed a few million from his church and millions from the parishioners. So in post the producers changed the ending and I am pretty sure they added some "4th wall" stuff like the guys talking about Minkow playing himself in the movie you are watching. So cherish the irony. What started out as a hagiography about a con man that found Jesus in the joint, has to change to be about a con man that got even better at conning in prison.
Check out Minkow's Wikipedia entry. I learned the story from an article in the The Hustle website titled, "The secretary who helped uncover one of America's strangest Ponzi schemes". That will give you the context of this movie, and why it is a bit chopped up and off-putting with the voice-overs and 4th wall stuff. It's quite fun hearing the dialog written and filmed under the impression Minkow was a reformed con artist and a good Christian. Then you can see all the little patches they put in to make clear the guy was an even bigger scumbag than what he went to prison for the first time. I hope this is not a spoiler, but Minkow got convicted three times and did three prison sentences, just getting out in June 6, 2019. He might be doing a quad-fecta, since he now claims to be reformed and is promoting a 2023 Discovery+ docu-series "King of the Con". Pro tip: don't believe it.
As to specific criticism here, well, I thought the young actor playing Minkow was great. OK, he is in his 30s playing a 16-year-old at the beginning. But they did need a good actor, and one that had some big guns to match Minkow's biceps in the second half of the film. Minkow's acting is lame compared to the A-listers, but still pretty good for a newbie. Everybody else was great for what ended up being a TV movie. The A-list actors did a good job and the camera and sound were OK. I didn't find the soundtrack deficient.
Con Man is free on Amazon's FreeVee streamer, so check it out. It's pretty solid right from the beginning. If you can like the beginning and are not too put off by the chopped up aspects after the producers found out he was still a scumbag, you won't regret watching.
