DECEPTION
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1995 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): *
Are you thinking about getting a camcorder ? Do you already own a camcorder? If you answered yes to either of these questions, then you MUST see DECEPTION. You will pay for the price of the admission many times over in just a single year by avoiding wasting tons of video tape.
The cinematography (Laszlo Kovacs) in DECEPTION contains in just over an hour and a half ALL possible bad camera techniques. By the sixth time you watch the underbelly of a jet roaring overhead or a close-up of silverware shaking in the sink as a jet flies by, you will be busy taking mental notes of what to avoid. You also get lots and lots of pans - many of them blurry to keep your viewers curiosity going. You will find how you can make your audience laugh during serious shots like the climbing a gigantic pyramid at dawn by using silly camera angles.
Oh yes, the movie itself? It is a mess. You say you want to know the plot. Well, this much I will tell you. A recent widower (Andie MacDowell) races around the globe trying to find who is taking the money out of all of the banks where her husband stashed money that she did not know he had in the first place. If you like Andie MacDowell like I do, then you do get to see her in almost every scene. If you like the costar, Liam Neeson, forget it, he hardly ever appears.
DECEPTION's silly plot is unimportant to you, of course, since you are seeing this film in order to save on tape purchases. Truth be told, the plot is so crazy and so full of holes that it keeps your attention in a strange sort of way. It is so bad, it is fascinating.
DECEPTION (also known as RUBY CAIRO) runs a mercifully short 1:30. It is rated PG-13 for some violence and bad language, but on the whole it is a pretty tame show. I give it a very generous * for somehow keeping my attention by being so ridiculous I kept wondering what would happen next. Non-camcorder owners should avoid this show.
**** = One of the top few films of this or any year. A must see film. *** = Excellent show. Look for it. ** = Average movie. Kind of enjoyable. * = Poor show. Don't waste your money. 0 = One of the worst films of this or any year. Totally unbearable.
REVIEW WRITTEN ON: December 13, 1993
Opinions expressed are mine and not meant to reflect my employer's.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews