DECEIVER

Year Released: 1997 MPAA Rating: R Running Time: 104 minutes Click to Expand Credits: Starring Tim Roth, Chris Penn, Michæl Rooker, Renee Zellweger, and Ellen Burstyn. Directed by Jonas Pate, Joshua Pate and Bill Butler. Produced by Peter Glatzer.

A sequel to “The Preppie Murder”? Not quite, but close enough. Tim Roth plays a spoiled rich, Ivy Leaguer with a multitude of nasty habits. He’s linked to the heinous butchery of a high priced call girl (Renee Zellwegger in an obvious attempt to do an about face from “Jerry Maquire”). Michæl Rooker and Chris Penn check in as the cops who interrogate the foppish socialite via a polygraph machine, but as the interrogations wear on it’s the epileptic yuppie who gets the better of them. “Deceiver” is not your typical crime drama, it’s a tangy duel of power, control and manipulation. Roth’s exuberant quirkiness goes a long way to keep the film moving, but first time film makers, Joshua and Jonas Pate, are so smug and self congratulatory with their Tarantino-esque stylization and contrived plot twists, that in the end, it’s the audience who gets deceived. -Tom Meek

Posted on December 8, 1997 in Reviews by Tom Meek

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