PopcornReel.com Film Review: "Deception" (20th Century Fox)

"Deception", the feature film directing debut from Marcel Langenegger, which opened across the U.S. and Canada today, isn't the most memorable story, but it is good enough to enjoy at least once, particularly for its production design and cinematography. The film is an homage to Hitchcock from a young man who counts the legendary director as one of his favorites and one of his great inspirations. Shots evoking "Psycho", "Vertigo", "Rear Window" and numerous other Hitchcock classics pepper the New York City landscape that Mr. Langenegger chooses to set the story (penned by New Yorker Mark Bomback) of Jonathan, a perpetual workaholic accountant (Ewan McGregor) and Wyatt, a slick, charismatic attorney (Hugh Jackman). Both share a laugh one reasonably late work night at Wyatt's law firm. When the two are first introduced sitting together on a table or ledge with the night looming large behind them they appear visually indistinguishable despite disparate heights and looks -- and this visual cue is significant to the film, which shrewdly works most of the time and on numerous levels -- including exploring the duality of the workaholic persona in a first hour which delves into discreet sex clubs in the Big Apple. The New York City sex club The List has rules akin to those in "Fight Club" and there are one or two brief moments in "Deception" that evoke that film.

Adult and discreet, "Deception" avoids the lurid or exploitative avenues down which a film nominally about sex clubs may be tempted to travel. It should be said however, that the film, which even for the first hour only glimpses sex clubs and their network operations, does so but not in especially graphic detail -- for those hoping more for sizzle than substance this will come as a slight disappointment -- but again most of the film is hardly about sex, but more about duality.

Jonathan, an isolated subject encased in glass -- both the cinematography by Dante Spinotti (who has a cameo in the film) and the production design (Patrizia von Brandenstein) are really good in terms of symbolically representing isolation and entrapment -- works too hard, so when Wyatt is the only company employee who actually pays attention to Jonathan initially, his lonely heart warms to the prospect of an actual living, breathing (night) life outside towers of glass. Before you can say, "are you free tonight?", Jonathan has accidentally picked up Wyatt's cell phone, and, as Dennis Miller's character in Barry Levinson's "Disclosure" crudely remarks, proceeds to get "more ass than a rental car".

In between, Jonathan has been smitten with a mysterious woman named S (a beguiling character played by Michelle Williams), a "femme fatale" who looks a little like Kim Basinger's Oscar-winning incarnation from "L.A. Confidential". In their initial scene eagle-eyed New Yorkers in the movie theater audience will note that the MTA transit midtown Manhattan "S" shuttle subway train (is labeled a "6"), which Jonathan catches from Times Square platform, ends up at Grand Central (the sign on the train says as much,) when S asks him if the train stops at Canal Street in Chinatown. "Yes", Jonathan says. Maybe the 6-as-S train is not a gaffe as much as it is part of the deception that the director (perhaps unintentionally in this specific instance) is depicting -- and the audience itself is definitely part of the duping process by the filmmaker.

Say what you want about Mr. Langenegger's film -- and there's lots to say about it -- it stays very true to its title. "Deception" is better than a number of moviegoing audiences will give it credit for. By film's end we have ended up somewhere that we perhaps didn't expect (at least some of us didn't expect.) S threatens to be an ornament of sorts but she isn't a demure figure in the proceedings that engulf Jonathan, who suddenly finds himself in too deep, and in more ways than one. Mr. Jackman, who as Wyatt has less screen time than both Mr. McGregor and Ms. Williams, flashes wicked smiles and promises lots of fun for Mr. McGregor's Jonathan. By the time the film is over we actually know less about Wyatt than we think we do.

In sum, Mr. Langenegger tries and succeeds in his big-screen directing debut. The moodiness and melancholy aspects of loneliness, longing and empty sexual encounters has been captured well and smoothly, with a tone that changes subtly as the terrain shifts. "Deception" evokes the night time of Los Angeles in "Heat" more than it does "Collateral", even as it is set in New York City, even as much of it is shot using digital cameras. The film looks good and feels good atmospherically as Mr. Spinotti's cinematography captures tonal shifts in midtown Manhattan to Chinatown. The skyline is also shot nicely against the night sky making for an authentic character -- New York City is a silent but towering presence in "Deception", yet Jonathan, also a creature that never sleeps (unless he's forced to) is a passive and simpering being to an extent. He sounds and looks like the bespectacled character Willem Dafoe played in the dishonest 1988 film "Mississippi Burning" -- weakened but resolute as his confidence grows, sometimes stubborn, other times just plain wrong-headed. The closing credits for the film also highlight Mr. Spinotti's cinematography of New York City, and it is alluring, as is the pulsing and sometimes foreboding techno music score by Raman Djawadi that runs throughout the film.

There are smaller statements made in this film, and for once women aren't solely bodies for disposal -- a frequent occurrence in last week's release "88 Minutes" -- here there are at least two stronger women characters, such as a New York Police Detective (played by Lisa Gay Hamilton) and a Wall Street executive played by Charlotte Rampling, although the double standard (which the director said in an interview that he fought against in order to get Ms. Rampling in the film) unfortunately plays against her character. Her dialogue with Jonathan is understated and so convincing that the visual accompaniment to go with her words sells her short. (Granted, Mr. Langenegger had to make concessions for "Deception" at some points, but had Helen Mirren been playing the character, she would have gone all out and full throttle.) Ms. Rampling is hardly uninhibited as a performer, but the visual abbreviations of her character in "Deception" are beyond the director's control. Had Abel Ferrara or Catherine Breillat and not a first-time feature-film director been at the reins, Ms. Rampling's character would likely not have been compromised. Still, "Deception" works well enough to be entertaining even if the story as a whole isn't earth-shattering.

One of the better, moodier thrillers so far, "Deception" scores more than enough points to pass the smell test.