For all its tricks, ‘Deception’ tangled in plot

A throwback to the erotic thrillers of the ‘80s and ‘90s -- you’d swear Michael Douglas or Demi Moore were going to show up any minute -- “Deception” would be laughably bad if it weren’t so rotely inert. A lonely accountant (Ewan McGregor) is befriended by a high-living lawyer (Hugh Jackman), who introduces him to a world of anonymous-but-classy sex in art-directed hotel rooms and later a series of scheming double-crosses. For good measure there is also a girl in peril (Michelle Williams).

Early on, there is an element of aspirational lifestyle envy about it all, as if fancy clothes and well-designed surroundings really do make a life, if not at least the making of a good watch commercial. Once the twists start twisting, the film loses any sense of genuine human behavior and becomes a slave to its own chunky plotting. The movie that took a moment to name-check the German artist Gerhard Richter (and even pause to admire one of his paintings) gets left by the wayside.

Once it gets up to speed, the various tricks and complications of the movie, written by Mark Bomback, are so baldly cherry-picked from other films that it half seems as if “Deception” is meant as some kind of “Sexy Movie” parody to go in line with the recent “Epic,” “Date” and “Scary” entries.

“Deception” paints itself into such outrageous corners of narrative convolution that characters start pulling some pretty remarkable rabbits out of their hats. Somehow, once he’s in over his head, McGregor’s nebbish accountant shows a deep and nimble knowledge of how to work around police procedures and also has a comes-in-handy knack for document forgery.

No small factor of what makes the film such a disappointment is the extremely talented and likable cast, all of whom deserve better roles than this, no matter the state of their mortgages or children’s college funds. Late in the film, Jackman does a brief, creepy song-and-dance to Georgie Fame’s “Yeh Yeh” that only puts into bold relief the danger and oddball verve that is lacking from the rest of the movie.

Director Marcel Langenegger, known for commercials and here making his feature debut, seems to have left the actors to figure it out for themselves. His concerns are much more in the pursuit of gleaming, Armani-sleek compositions and a rather fruitless and wearying visual motif regarding glass and reflections. (No one is quite what they appear to be; we get it.)

The only upside to all this is the work of cinematographer Dante Spinotti, who also has a cameo. Having worked extensively with Michael Mann, Spinotti certainly knows a thing or two about animating modernist spaces, and here there is a small charge from watching the way in which the lighting and the grain of the image sometimes shift drastically not only from scene to scene but even from shot to shot.

According to the film’s production notes, Spinotti and Langenegger reached loggerheads over whether to shoot on film or high-definition video, and so they compromised by doing a bit of both. When a film is as dramatically ludicrous as “Deception,” playing spot-the-format is a pleasant and engaging diversion.

--

“Deception.” MPAA rating: R for sexual content, language, brief violence and some drug use. Running time: 1 hour, 48 minutes. In general release.