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Review: Deception

April 24, 2008 at 5:22 pm by cheryluce

by cheryluce
April 24, 2008August 27, 2008Filed under:
  • Drama
  • Reviews
  • Romance
  • Thriller

From the undeceptively clear title you can guess that there’s a deceiver afoot in this competent thriller scripted by Mark Bomback (“Live Free or Die Hard”). First-time director Marcel Langenegger packages a workable genre piece set in late-night Manhattan. The corporate elite on “The List” book fuck appointments with one another in hip hotels. Auditor Jonathan McQuarry (Ewan McGregor from “Cassandra’s Dream” and a couple “Star Wars” episodes)—who itemizes his sex partner at four, to date—suffers from a name that practically caws for a predator to alight. That would be Wyatt Bose (Hugh Jackman, a two-time “X-Man” with a third on the way), who befriends the bespeckled Jonathan, lends him a $4,000 coat, switches cell phones in a fake slip-up, and then lets Jonathan take Bose’s calls from members on “The List” while Bose is away in London on business. Members on the no-names-allowed “List” only ask, “Are you free tonight?” and then make a rendezvous if you are. Jonathan breaks the rules and converses with all-I-know-is-the-initial-on-your-key-ring “S” (Michelle Williams from “Brokeback Mountain.”) During a tryst in a Chinatown hotel, he comes back from the ice machine down the hall, and she is gone. Jonathan has a lot of figuring to do after that. There’s $20 million to transfer. A hostage buy-out deal. Leaky pipes. A gas leak. And then fond close-ups of laughing children in a plaza in Spain that hint at happy dividends ever after. 107m. Anamorphic 2.40 widescreen. (Bill Stamets)

Author: cheryluce

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Tagged:
  • Brokeback Mountain
  • Cassandra's Dream
  • Deception
  • Ewan McGregor
  • Hugh Jackman
  • Live Free or Die Hard
  • Marcel Langenegger
  • Mark Bomback
  • Michelle Williams
  • Star Wars
  • X-Men

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