'Deception' — Movie Review

Don’t be deceived by the star casting of Hugh Jackman and Ewan McGregor in Deception. First of all, it’s been directed by a newbie whose resumé highlight is a TV ad for the Swiss postal service. Second, and most importantly, this third-class thriller opens in theaters dead on arrival.

If Deception proves anything, it’s that Jackman shouldn’t quit his day job as Wolverine in the X-Men franchise. The handsome, barrel-chested Aussie is a big hunk all right, but here his acting is as stiff as a Big Hunk bar.

Cast as a modern-day Mephistopheles, Jackman is Wyatt Bose, a suave New York City lawyer who initiates a nerdy accountant (McGregor) into “The List”—an anonymous underground sex club made up of Manhattan’s rich, hot and famous. Had Eliot Spitzer got on the List before he got seriously punk’d, he might still be governor.

Glasses do not make the nerd, which is why McGregor’s casting as Jonathan McQuarry appears shortsighted from any glance. If we can believe McGregor as a workaholic accountant, it’s still a double-jointed stretch to think he’s a guy who’d spend his nights alone in his apartment watching the water drip from a leaky ceiling.

Tennis racket and reefer in hand, Wyatt befriends Jonathan, slyly introducing him to the marvels of anonymous sex in the city, courtesy of a string of beautiful strangers. In the slick, steamy sex montages, director Marcel Langenegger bares his scanty talents. Maybe he’s auditioning to direct Victoria’s Secret commercials.

Despite the abundance of no-strings sex (it’s “intimacy without intricacy” says one happy camper), Jonathan still hopes for Ms. Right to come along. He first sees the elusive “S” (Michelle Williams) on a subway platform. Lucky for him, she’s also a member of the club. Languorously posed in front of Langenegger’s cameras, Williams is a tantalizing vision, her blond hair shimmering like spun gold.

As you might guess, all of this has to be too good to be true for our smitten number-cruncher, especially when the suspicious coincidences start to add up. Just when Jonathan has the woman of his dreams within his grasp, he’s rudely awakened and his nightmare begins.

Minus an original plot, Langenegger pours on the atmosphere with a ladle, even setting a pivotal scene in Chinatown that evokes Roman Polanski’s great 1970s neo-noir. But every noir needs a heavy, and Jackman is a 98-pound weakling in the role. Langenegger is forced into some serious miscasting, and it costs him. Williams might be every man’s blond dream girl, but only until she starts talking.

Deception’s press kit touts that ace cinematographer Dante Spinotti shot the night scenes using a state-of-the-art digital camera. Today’s filmmakers have an unprecedented array of high-tech techniques that are leaving the analog cinema world in the darkroom. But if the story stinks, who cares? Taking his cue from Wyatt, Langenegger is a seducer, scamming his audience with trashy flash—and an ending as crooked as Enron accounting.