DECEIVER
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. MGM Director: Jonas Pate Writer: Jonas Pate & Josh Pate Cast: Tim Roth, Renee Zellweger, Michael Rooker, Chris Penn
They say that absinthe makes the heart grow fonder, but don't believe it. This liqueur with its opaline-green color, flavored with wormwood and consumed largely by bluebloods from the American South can make a mean and crafty gentleman into an even more dangerous and deceptive dude. If the imbiber is cursed with epilepsy to boot, watch out. You don't know what he's capable of doing. What's more, even he may be oblivious to his actions. By centering "Deceiver" on such an individual, Jonas Pate who directed the dazzling police drama which he and his twin brother Josh wrote have concocted an intoxicating whodunit. This cat-and-mouse game between a murder suspect and two detectives who subject him to a series of polygraph tests pits a Princeton summa cum laude graduate with a 151 I.Q. against two cops who just can't keep up with his maneuvers. Conceived with the working title "The Liar," the Pates' rogue has as much in common with a recent picture bearing a similar name as does Tim Roth with Jim Carrey.
Filmed entirely in one of the most handsome of American cities, Charleston, South Carolina, "Deceiver" fails to exploit its location but is photographed principally within one of the town's police precincts and in the minds of its three principal characters. A classy prostitute, Elizabeth (Renee Zellweger), is found dead, divided in half by a long kitchen knife and buried in suitcases in opposite corners of the municipality. A suspect who has been frequently seen with her and who, in fact, had invited her to a posh party in his parents' home is pulled in by two detectives from the polygraph unit, Kennesaw (Michael Rooker) and Braxton (Chris Penn). The suspect, Wayland (Tim Roth), has no lawyer but needs none: he is convinced that he can turn the tables on his interrogators and by doing so can be permanently removed from suspicion. On the one hand Wayland--who had from time to time conversed with the hooker but who insists he had never touched her--has brains and money in his favor. He is what they still call in Charleston a blueblood, whose wealthy father provides him with enough cash to allow him access to important information about the town's residents. On the other hand, he is an alcoholic who is fond of absinthe, and subject to liquor-augmented seizures. When in the midst of a paroxysm, he can climb furniture and attack people who touch him without recalling the event when he returns to consciousness.
During the course of several sessions with the lie detector, Wayland surprises the two cops with his knowledge of their weaknesses. For Braxton it's an addiction to gambling, a compulsion which has put him $20,000 in debt to the head of the town's underworld, Mook (Ellen Burstyn). For Kennesaw it's a seething, internal rage against his wife, a woman who outclasses him and who is having an affair. "Deceiver" is one movie that helps prove the premise bandied about in the nation's schools that knowledge is power. By seeming to know as much about their lives as they do themselves, Wayland is able to gain the upper hand on the detectives, an advantage that gives the final half hour of the piece a particularly compelling nature. Hold on to your shoes because the final twenty seconds--which sew up the loose strings--may knock your socks off.
Josh and Jonas Pate are known to a select audience for their 1996 Sundance Film Festival work, "The Grave." That indie movie looks at first like a horror picture but actually deals in an intermittently comic style with a shotgun-wielding maniac and some moronic grave-robbers motivated by what they hear about a rich man who buried millions of dollars of goods inside his own grave. Shucking their preoccupation with over-the-top theatrics, the Pates this time have disciplined themselves wonderfully to produce a work emphasizing language, particularly its use by the articulate Wayland to turn the tables on his examiners.
In a sense, it's a shame that cameraman Bill Butler is able to give us just a scant insight into the beauty and charm of that old world city of Charleston--every bit as aristocratic as the Savannah, Georgia of "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil." Instead he focuses inward to underscore the churning of emotions as three men play their canny chess-like game of one-upmanship. As such the movie takes on a theatrical milieu, with its emphasis on dialogue and situation in enclosed spaces. Yet "Deceiver" works quite well on the big screen thanks to a clever plot and its larger-than-life performers, particularly the great Tim Roth--who has entertained us so wonderfully in a variety of villainous roles in movies like "Rob Roy" and "Hoodlum." When Roth's pupils bury themselves deep into his forehead, we in the audience virtually feel the torment of a man succumbing to seizures, fits made all the more devastating by his love for absinthe and his consumption of powerful pills. We sit at the edge of our seats understanding perfectly the perspiration that pours from Michael Rooker's brow, the tension that builds in Chris Penn's body as he tries to regain command over out-of-control situations. Ellen Burstyn is not so fortunate, being cast not too successfully (and virtually unrecognizably) against type as the remarkably sinister queen of the underworld, a woman who dispenses pills, takes bets, and generally knows the weaknesses of the important people in this closed community of manifestly antebellum aristocrats. As Elizabeth, Renee Zellweger has thrown off the naivete that allowed her to go totally gaga over Tom Cruise in "Jerry Maguire," turning in a fairly convincing role as a seductive prostitute, while Rosanna Arquette acquits herself well as the abused wife of the policeman she married beneath her class.
"Deceiver," like "L.A. Confidential," is a thoroughly adult drama which presses its audience to listen carefully to the spoken word and keeps the Big Secret effectively hidden until the final, dramatic frames. Rated R. Running time: 102 minutes. (C) Harvey Karten 1998
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