Deception (the new movie with Hugh Jackman, Ewan McGregor, and Michelle Williams) is getting pretty much savaged by the critics, but I found this interesting review at the Pioneer Press website, a newspaper from Minneapolis. One thing, though...Michelle played Coco Rivington, not Edie Sedgwick in
I'm Not There. Why why why can't they ever get the little details right? Sigh....
Movie review: Michelle Williams complicates thriller, in a good wayPioneer Press
Article Last Updated: 04/24/2008 11:49:33 AM CDT
I was reluctant to go public with my crush on Michelle Williams' acting until I was sure it was real, but "Deception" confirms everything.
The movie is not great, but Williams is. Her part is both underwritten and clichéd — she's the beautiful temptress who is damaged in ways the movie doesn't care about — but Williams breathes so much humanity and vulnerability into the part that, when she's onscreen, "Deception" is thrown offbalance. It's supposed to be about the two guys, played by Ewan McGregor and Hugh Jackman, but they both fade next to Williams' incandescent talent.
McGregor plays a drab accountant who falls under the spell of a flashy businessman (Jackman). Jackman lures McGregor into a sex club, whose members anonymously phone each other for quickies (it's like craigslist, without Craig). McGregor meets confident, provocative Williams, known only as "S" (McGregor guesses it stands for Sybil or Sophie, but we suspect it is short for Screwed Up), only to discover he has unwittingly stepped into criminal territory, complete with a body and a pile of stolen cash.
"Deception" has a placid beauty that isn't necessarily an asset, since "placid" goes with "thriller" about as well as "raw" goes with "pork." Director Marcel Langenegger has been handed a script that's filled with coincidences and happenstance, the sort of thing that might work if he ripped through it so quickly that we don't notice things aren't adding up, but his lush, slowed-down approach gives us plenty of time to tote up the improbabilities.
It doesn't help that McGregor and Jackman's characters are so dully unsympathetic — their deaths would simply give the world one or two less Armani-clad tools. But Langenegger did one thing right, and that was casting Williams. The actress, in a role very different from the wounded homemaker in "Brokeback Mountain" or Edie Sedgwick in "I'm Not There," seems incapable of playing an uncomplicated person. Her smoky eyes and blank dialogue are meant to tell us she's a Kim Novak-style suicide blonde in "Deception," but Williams conveys so much hurt, insecurity and need that you hope she doesn't end up with either of the dudes who are fighting over her.
http://www.twincities.com/movies/ci_9039691?nclick_check=1