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Despite an A-list cast, 'Deception' isn't fooling anyone

A buttoned-down Ewan McGregor unwittingly stumbles upon a world of anonymous sex in this erotic thriller that chugs along at a sluggish pace By Manohla Dargis NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE, NEW YORK A would-be erotic thriller with no heat and zero chills, Deception has the kind of glassy, glossy sheen and risible story that mean to suggest Basic Instinct but instead invoke lesser laughers like Jade and Sliver. A miscast Ewan McGregor plays a mouse who falls in with a charismatic (or so the screenplay insists) stranger played by the miscast Hugh Jackman. One improbable thing leads to another, and suddenly the mouse is roaring, having been inducted into a sex club in which beautiful women in French lingerie crawl around on all fours as if auditioning for a remake of 9 1/2 Weeks. At one point a bony Michelle Williams shows up in a fabulous haircut and towering heels that would fell a lesser woman. Complications ensue. Directed by the first-timer Marcel Langenegger, whose background in advertising is belied by this movie’s sluggish pace, Deception was written by Mark Bomback, who did far better coming up with polysyllabic grunts and groans for Bruce Willis in Live Free or Die Hard. The characters in Deception are little more than avatars, generic types (good guy, bad man, fatal blonde), that Langenegger moves from one busy setup to the next. The venerable cinematographer Dante Spinotti, whose credits include The Insider, here works with a dark, almost monochromatic palette and bathes the exteriors in an attractive gun-metal blue, but neither his work nor that of the expert production designer Patrizia von Brandenstein (The Ice Harvest, A Simple Plan) is enough to save the movie from itself. Cougar fans take note: Charlotte Rampling plays a sex club denizen, sometimes seminude.
FILM NOTES DECEPTION DIRECTED BY: Marcel Langenegger STARRING: Hugh Jackman (Wyatt Bose), Ewan McGregor (Jonathan McQuarry), Michelle Williams (S), Lisa Gay Hamilton (Detective Russo), Maggie Q (Tina), Natasha Henstridge (Wall Street Analyst), Lynn Cohen (Woman), Danny Burstein (Clute Controller), Malcolm Goodwin (Cabbie), Dante Spinotti (Herr Kleiner/Moretti), Bill Camp (Clancey Controller), Lisa Kron (Receptionist), Margaret Colin (Ms. Pomerantz), Charlotte Rampling (Wall Street Belle) RUNNING TIME: 107 minutes TAIWAN RELEASE: TODAY
When a lawyer introduces his accountant friend to a sex club, the fun doesn’t last long as a heist and a disappearance put both in the spotlight. PHOTO COURTESY OF FOX	PHOTO COURTESY OF FOX
PHOTO COURTESY OF FOX

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