7 out of 10.
A great Rental movie. This thriller had me guessing all the way up to the end. I waffled back and forth from disliking characters to liking them.
Roth is again great as a nuerotic over priveleged epeleptic. He is by no means a physically imposing man, but in some of the scenes, you get a real sense that this guy is dangerous.
I also like any casting of Penn as the laughable but sincere looser.
This movie is one of those rare pick-ups at Blockbuster..... never commercially touted, but seeing the actors on the box makes ya pick it up.... You get it home and wow.... its a great movie.
Deceiver
1997
Action / Crime / Drama / Mystery / Thriller
Deceiver
1997
Action / Crime / Drama / Mystery / Thriller
Plot summary
The gruesome death of a prostitute brings suspicion on one of her clients, James Wayland, a brilliant, self-destructive and epileptic heir to a textile fortune. So detectives Braxton and Kennesaw take Wayland in for questioning, thinking they can break the man. But despite his troubles, Wayland is a master of manipulation, and during the interrogation, he begins to turn the tables on the investigators, forcing them to reveal their own sinister sides.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
June 04, 2022 at 10:29 PM
Director
Top cast
Tech specs
720p.WEB 1080p.WEBMovie Reviews
Kept me guessing
badly flawed high baroque murder thriller
This has hints of Abel Ferrara about it (esp. the welcome appearance of the late and lamented Chris Penn from Ferrara's 'The Funeral.') I've seen this twice now, and am still not quite sure who really murdered Elizabeth. It doesn't really matter, I suppose, but there's a sense here in which style predominates a bit too strongly over substance. Michael Rooker & Tim Roth overact a bit - so the steadying presence of Chris Penn is helpful here. I'd liked to have known more about Roth's upbringing and so forth than we're granted. The scenes of him with his parents & friends are some of the best - all that baloney with lie detectors in dimly lit rooms becomes a bit dreary after a while.
Nice to see 1) Michael Parks (one of the nastiest villains in Twin Peaks) - here confirming one's idea that psychiatrists and psychologists are easily more strange and conflicted than their patients, and 2) Mark Damon - most famous in American cinema from Roger Corman's Fall of the House of Usher way back in 1960! Worth an outing if you should ever get bored with the Pittsburgh Penguins, but hardly worth all the effort you need to expend in an attempt to 'work out the story.' (By the way, are all American police really like this?)