Rated R for sexual content, language, brief violence and some drug use.
107 Minutes

Directed By: Marcel Langenegger
Written By: Mark Bomback
Staring: Hugh Jackman, Ewan McGregor, and Michelle Williams

Don’t think you cannot climb the wall. You’re the only one guarding it.  -Wyatt Bose

Review

What a weird movie.  In some ways it was an exciting thriller and in so many other ways a boring remake that was totally unoriginal.  By it’s finale it was too “happy” for the tone set throughout.  The payoffs were overly contrived and didn’t give me the grit that had built to that point.  It as anti-climatic to a film that was for the most part pretty clever in it’s construction.

From the first interlude it grips the audiences attention by mere affection for the two leading men, and then Wyatt Bose (Hugh Jackman) slowly wins you over with his charm, just as he does Jonathan.  Jonathan is an account who also lives his life by the numbers.  Predictability and order is what drives his existence and life.  Auditing big companies and firms is what he does.  Unable to connect with anyone at work and his home life being a dud he welcomes the overwhelming charisma of Wyatt, an attorney at the firm he’s auditing.  For whatever reason Wyatt takes to Jonathan and opens him to a new world that involves a sex club and something far darker lingering underneath.

The pacing in which it does this flips back and forth.  There is the slow pace that must be a representation of Jonathan’s life and when he enters Wyatt’s world things become increasingly fast paced and dark.  It doesn’t always feel natural, but the mystery itself is pretty elusive and cleverly interwoven throughout the story.  At moments it becomes too elusive and loses the audiences interest.

The ending was just an awful mishap against the darkness the rest of the film boasted.  It seemed a complete contradiction of everything else and trivialized what had happened up to that point.  Most of the film makes complete sense, but because this ending is so opposite it really denotes most of the events that happened prior giving them far less integrity, thus making Deception almost undesirable to watch again.

The three characters that carry this film are by far the most interesting aspect of it.  Jackman’s charm but also his malevolent side make him both likable and fearsome and his character extremely unpredictable.  In contrast McGregor as Jonathan is entirely predictable, but when his carefully organized life is tossed in the air his shocking reactions make him the mostincalculable character of all.  Michelle Williams could easily have been a stagnant beauty in the film specifically as a pawn in the big picture, but her kinetic energy as “S” gave her far more significance than a mere object of affection.

Overall this movie managed to be okay, but it lacked a passion and excitement to overcome it’s faults.  Not a bad way to waste your time for a few hours, no one is going to complain about watching any of the three lead actors.  They become the source of real interest when it comes to everything about the movie.  Each deliver exceptionally well where the writing or direction fails.  Basically Deception was a forgettable movie.

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