Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
4/26/08
There are two kinds of people
in the world. The ones who sit back and wait for happiness and success
to come to them and those who barrel forward determined to grab those things
by sheer force of will. Those of us in the former group have the
certain fascination with the later: doesn't everybody wish they were
that guy who takes what he wants and seems immune to doubt and regret?
The new Hugh Jackman/Ewan McGregor vehicle Deception is ostensibly
one of those tricky thrillers where nothing is as it seems, but at its'
heart, it's a sensational character study about two different worldviews.
Jonathan McQuarry (Ewan McGregor)
is an accountant who specializes in audits. Spending all his time
in offices where he's The Enemy, he makes no friends at work and is too
shy to meet anyone in the outside world. One day, while he's auditing
a law firm into the late hours, in walks attorney Wyatt Bose (Hugh Jackman).
Wyatt is everything Jonathan wishes he was: handsome, funny, and
charismatic as hell. The lawyer offers the accountant a joint and
they spend the rest of the night and the next few days bonding. Then,
Wyatt is called away on business and they “accidentally” swap cell phones.
Jonathan finds Wyatt's phone ringing nightly, with women on the other end
asking “Are you free tonight?” and giving him a hotel and room number.
Curious, he shows up and finds a beautiful woman (Natasha Henstridge) ready
to have sex. This, in a nutshell, is The List: a group of wealthy,
powerful and pretty people whose jobs keep them too busy for a social life
and leave just enough time for random, name-free sex with other members
of their little club. Jonathan calls Wyatt, who chuckles at the turn
of events and tells him to have fun with the phone. He does, and
soon enough finds himself in a hotel room with a woman (Michelle Williams)
he had one of those James Blunt moments with on the subway a month before.
This time, Jonathan wants to exchange names, but all he gets from her is
an initial: “S”. But there is a spark between them and they
get together for a second meeting, during which he steps out into the hall
for ice and returns to an empty hotel room that was the scene of a bloody
struggle. The police won't buy his almost detail-free story and he
returns home to find Wyatt waiting: his friend proposes a way Jonathan
can keep S alive by stealing millions from his next auditing client.
Here's the problem with thrillers
in the post-Sixth Sense era. When we used to see no more than
a movie or two a year built on twists and turns, it was easy to play the
magic tricks necessary to pull one off. Now, when we see one or two
a month, the filmmakers only have two choices. They can cheat on
the details and leave fans feeling betrayed or play fair and have almost
no chance of slipping their surprises past an observant audience.
Deception falls into the later camp, and I don't think it got a
single clue past me. But because it's a movie about characters rather
than just a relentlessly running plot machine, it's OK if you can see the
gears of Wyatt's game turning. In some ways, the obvious nature of
the cons he's running while ingratiating himself in the opening scenes
make them pop even more because it shows us just how desperate Jonathan
is for a friend when he doesn't notice them himself.
And those two characters
are so crisply introduced, I was pulled right into the world from the opening
shots: legendary cinematographer Dante Spinotti creates a world of
bloodless office buildings droning on under harsh yet minimal light.
The dialog returns again and again to the notion the more successful the
high-rolling members of The List become, the less time they have to imagine
any social life outside random sex with pre-approved people. Every
detail of the way Wyatt acts around Jonathan is perfect for setting up
a con: he flatters him with his friendship, then insults him for
being such a loser and flatters him again by laughing it off. And
what could be a more perfect offer for a lonesome loser like Jonathan (notice
how there's nothing in his apartment that seems to come from a time after
high school) than a chance to sleep with beautiful women without having
to be his shy, insecure self around them? Being on The List is like
literally borrowing Wyatt's life.
Except that life is a lie.
Well, maybe not a lie: “That was foreplay, and now you're f**ked”,
Wyatt explains, in one of my favorite lines of the year. Once the
real gears of the scheme start running, Jonathan's got to really think
like the man he wishes he was just to stay alive. The closing scenes
give each man a different opportunity to try each others' lives on:
watch the contrast between the way Jonathan explains his job to Wyatt when
they first meet and then the way Wyatt explains it to a third party near
the end.
Obviously, I wouldn't be
swishing the wonder of these characters around like this if Deception
didn't offer great performances backing a rich, thoughtful screenplay.
Plot mechanics aren't Mark Bomback's specialty (he did write Godsend,
after all), but he's created three characters that really pop (I can't
say much about S without spoiling the hell out of the proceedings) and
he and debuting director Marcel Langenegger use every tool in their boxes
to show them off. Jackman has been racking up some really great performances
the last few years (I'm going to pretend his misadventure on TV's Viva
Laughlin never happened), and he continues the streak here. Not
only is Wyatt the perfect con man, but he does a wonderful job peeling
back the layers to show you that beneath this calculating exterior is a
total lack of conscience. It's not so much that he's angry or mean
as he's 100% expedient. McGregor really gets the quiet, awkward sadness
of Jonathan and he never for a moment seems like an idiot for latching
so quickly onto both an improbable new friendship and love at first sight.
There's loneliness in this man's bones and he's been waiting his whole
life for something special to happen to him. To even dare to be suspicious
when it does would be more than he could bear (notice how Wyatt makes a
joke about suicide that suggests Jonathan's only two choices are his friendship
and death). Williams has a more quiet skill at seeming like a lifeline
(as she did so perfectly in The Station Agent), and that makes it
easy to view what happens between Jonathan and S as a lucky coincidence.
She also has a really sensational scene with Jackman the nature of which
I will not even hint at. Actresses like Henstridge, Maggie Q and
Charlotte Rampling do a great job of seeming like exactly the sort of people
who a man like Jonathan would expect to find on The List.
I'd imagine that most of
the writing you'll read about Deception (could the studio have picked
a blander title?) will focus on the obviousness of its' thriller mechanics
and the salaciousness of the List gimmick (the movie's actually a lot less
exploitive than it would have been back in the Joe Eszterhas era).
But all that misses the point. “Come for the thrills, stay for the
character study” might not make much of a marketing slogan, but hey, it
worked for No Country for Old Men... |
