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Deception
20th Century Fox


5.8

based on 23 reviews
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How did we calculate this?

based on 5 votes
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MPAA RATING: R for sexual content, language, brief violence and some drug use

Starring Hugh Jackman, Ewan McGregor, Michelle Williams, Maggie Q, Natasha Henstridge, and Rachael Taylor

A simple enough question, but how Jonathan McQuarry answers it will change his life forever. A corporate auditor adrift in a sea of New York's power elite, Jonathan's work is his entire life. But a chance meeting with Wyatt Bose, a charismatic corporate lawyer, introduces Jonathan to a decadent playground for Manhattan's executive upper crust. For these power brokers, whose eighteen-hour workdays leave no time for a personal life, there's "The List" - a sex club, of sorts, where the right cell-phone number and four simple words ("Are you free tonight?") can lead to an evening's sexual fulfillment. It's a world of "intimacy without intricacy," as Jonathan's first conquest (or vice versa) explains to him, and through The List Jonathan discovers a side of himself that he didn't know existed. But an affair with a ravishing and mysterious stranger known to Jonathan only by her first initial 'S', will expose him to yet another world he never imagined - one of betrayal, treachery and murder. (20th Century Fox)

GENRE(S):	Action \| Drama \| Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	Mark Bomback
DIRECTED BY:	Marcel Langenegger
RELEASE DATE:	Theatrical: April 25, 2008
RUNNING TIME:	108 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Jackman and McGregor are a delight to watch.

LA Weekly Sam Sweet

This vision of Gotham is as fastidious as the cockpit of a BMW. But rather than sell luxury sedans, Deception offers a fantasy even big money can't buy -- Wall Street as a cross between a James Bond adventure and a Victoria’s Secret spread.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

With her arresting, off-kilter look of bruised desire, Michelle Williams ends up being the most interesting aspect of this somber corn.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Deception is not the cool, noirish thriller it tries to be. Despite a cast that includes double-crossers Hugh Jackman and Ewan McGregor and Michelle Williams caught in the middle, the film is a yawn.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

The dynamic between Jackman and McGregor bears an uncanny resemblance to that of Aaron Eckhart and Matt Malloy from "In The Company Of Men": the cool, suave, experienced philosopher of excess and his weaker, more earnest pupil.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

An overwrought and ultimately silly thriller.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

The film's first-time director, the TV-commercial-trained Marcel Langenegger, is out to emulate Hitchcock with dashes of "Vertigo," "Strangers on a Train" and more. But his homage is uninspired and disconnected, and his film is a bore.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

To his credit, Langenegger keeps things relatively simple instead of resorting to lots of fast cutting and fancy camera angles. To his detriment, the picture he has made barely moves at all. This no-style style isn't restraint; it's a kind of indifference to filmmaking.

Empire Kim Newman

Mildly titillating, but not very good.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Why Hugh Jackman was so excited by Mark Bomback's script to star and produce the film is as big a mystery as why such talents-on-a-roll as Ewan McGregor and Michelle Williams joined the cast.

Variety Brian Lowry

Strip out Deception's fleeting nudity and what's left is a throwback to "B" movie days -- a thin thriller, burdened by clunky dialogue and prone to telegraphing its twists.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Stephen Cole

A lamentably slack and dishonest genre exercise.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

To succeed, Deception requires viewers to be both inattentive and stupid. There's not a twist in this flimsy and moth-eaten plot that isn't both contrived and transparent and not a character who hasn't been hopelessly manipulated by the needs of the narrative.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Deception is another example of when genre-fication (the forcing of otherwise intriguing stories into the straitjackets of horror, thriller or other genres) reduces our entertainment to head-shaking banality.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

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."

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Jackman and McGregor throw their best American accents behind the effort, but Michelle Williams seems fairly bored as the sex-club partner who wins McGregor's heart. I'm with her.

Los Angeles Times Mark Olsen

Deception would be laughably bad if it weren't so rotely inert.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Quickly devolves into a nonprescription alternative to Ambien.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Everything is wrong pretty much from the start of this misbegotten adventure.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Bomback's script is the worst thing a thriller can be - a flip-flopper, using quick character changes for plot twists. And Langenegger's direction rarely sustains a mood or tone, only a sleek veneer of luxury and knowingness.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

The movie actually does feel like an Americanized work of Hong Kong moviemaking. But the desperate, derivative style, the nonsense plotting, and leggy, horny women are applied like too much MSG.

Austin Chronicle Steve Davis

Whether you view it as intellectually dishonest or just plain sloppy, Deception is a movie that more than lives up to its title.

New York Daily News Elizabeth Weitzman

The real culprit is first-time director Marcel Langenegger, who seems to have studied for his debut by watching nothing but Cinemax. The score hints at ominous activities that never happen, a rain machine provides the only atmosphere and the actors have to suffer through the silliest sex scenes in recent memory.

The average user rating for this movie is 5.8 (out of 10) based on 5 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

PK O gave it a4:
Chad S. Nails it perfectly with a 4! As I left the theatre I thought "If you want to see this movie done well, see The Spanish Prisoner by David Mamet." It is all this film was not: clever and intriguing. I'd gladly watch Ewan McGregor or Hugh Jackman make toast for 2 hours, but this film tries the patience since is could have been so much more and, ultimately, is nothing at all. Even the sex is not that hot, which is difficult to manage considering who is involved. Rental? Maybe on a slow night alone, in January.

Chris W. gave it a7:
While Deception might have been contrived and improbable at best, it was also both remarkably beautiful and fascinatingly ugly simultaniously. Both Jackman and McGregor deliver dynamic performances that refuse to be ignored. And who really gives a crap if it delivers too few plot twists? Many critics have lately been complaining of too many plot twists. Is there a specific number of twists a plot should have?

Billy S. gave it a4:
This must be one of those movies that has been on the shelf for three years and they decided to release it now when there is nothing else out there to compete with it. It was better on the shelf!

Chad S. gave it a4:
If "Deception" was a European production, first of all, there would be more sex. Waaaay more sex. Even if a dead body, or two, turned up, it wouldn't stop the French, or the Swedes, or the Krauts, from f****** like bunnies, and not feeling guilty about it the next morning. If "Deception" was a Tootsie Roll Pop, we'd want to know how many licks it would take to get to the center. But "Deception" doesn't want to be graphic like a sucker. The film lacks the tongue for it. In other words, we never find out how many anonymous sexual encounters it would take before Jonathan McQuarry(Ewan McGregor) got sick of "The List". That's because "Deception" would rather be a second-rate version of David Mamet's "The Spanish Prisoner", as the film turns into a sort of Hitchcockian coitus interruptus. Since the film ignores the potential for irony(an irony that a European production might've strived for): a lonely man who ends up lonelier, even though he's always surrounded by beautiful, willing women; for the love of God, I thought, please don't let Wyatt Bose(Hugh Jackman) turn out to be imaginary. Please don't let this sex club be like "Fight Club". But such a banality is all relative. Regardless of Wyatt's true identity and motive for befriending Jonathan, "Deception", like most contemporary mainstream American films, fails to deal with sexual themes in a methodologically serious fashion.

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Deception 20th Century Fox

Deception
20th Century Fox