Movies
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
Wide Releases
Now In Theaters
76
(500) Days of Summer
49
2012
60
9
17
All About Steve
37
Amelia
53
Astro Boy
70
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
52
Blind Side
47
Box, The
61
Capitalism: A Love Story
55
Christmas Carol, A
43
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
66
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
23
Couples Retreat
39
Fame
30
Final Destination, The
34
Fourth Kind, The
41
G-Force
46
Halloween II
73
Hangover, The
78
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
66
Informant!, The
69
Inglourious Basterds
58
Invention of Lying, The
47
Jennifer's Body
66
Julie & Julia
34
Law Abiding Citizen
54
Men Who Stare At Goats, The
67
Michael Jackson's This Is It
28
Pandorum
58
Pirate Radio
39
Planet 51
30
Saw VI
53
Shorts
33
Stepfather, The
45
Surrogates
46
Twilight Saga: New Moon, The
71
Where the Wild Things Are
67
Whip It
28
Whiteout
73
Zombieland
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Limited Releases
Now In Theaters
58
(Untitled)
96
35 Shots of Rum
56
Adam
39
Adventures of Power
66
Afterschool
73
Amreeka
49
Antichrist
76
Baader Meinhof Complex, The
86
Beaches of Agnes, The
71
Big Fan
65
Black Dynamite
76
Bliss
26
Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, The
44
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
81
Bright Star
76
Broken Embraces
70
Bronson
62
Cloud 9
65
Coco Before Chanel
69
Cold Souls
60
Collapse
82
Cove, The
75
Crude
82
Damned United, The
53
Dare
50
Defamation
67
Departures
70
Earth Days
85
Education, An
55
Endgame
88
Fantastic Mr. Fox
31
Fix
49
Food Beware: The French Organic Revolution
80
Food, Inc.
xx
From Mexico with Love
28
Gentlemen Broncos
72
Good Hair
89
Goodbye Solo
63
Horse Boy, The
74
House of the Devil, The
xx
How to Seduce Difficult Women
26
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
70
It Might Get Loud
46
Killing Kasztner
43
Little Traitor, The
34
Looking for Palladin
80
Lorna's Silence
46
Love Hurts
84
Maid, The
45
Mammoth
75
Messenger, The
55
Missing Person, The
59
More Than a Game
34
Motherhood
62
My One and Only
48
New York, I Love You
66
No Impact Man
26
Oh My God
68
Paranormal Activity
68
Paris
79
Precious: Based on the Novel by Sapphire
73
Red Cliff
69
September Issue, The
79
Serious Man, A
65
Skin
41
Splinterheads
42
Staten Island
50
Stoning of Soraya M., The
58
Storm
82
Sun, The
49
Ten9Eight: Shoot for the Moon
73
That Evening Sun
61
Trucker
49
Turning Green
83
U2 3D
45
Uncertainty
67
Visual Acoustics
32
War on Kids
67
Way We Get By, The
65
Wedding Song, The
xx
White on Rice
59
William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe
74
Woman in Berlin, A
43
Women in Trouble
69
Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Deception
Generally unfavorable reviews
Based on 23 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 9 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie >
Movie Info
Genre(s): Action | Drama | Suspense/Thriller
Written by: Mark Bomback
Directed by: Marcel Langenegger
Release Date:
Theatrical: April 25, 2008
DVD: September 23, 2008
Running Time: 108 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
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)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
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...
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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein
An overwrought and ultimately silly thriller.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Stephen Cole
A lamentably slack and dishonest genre exercise.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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."
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Mark Olsen
Deception would be laughably bad if it weren't so rotely inert.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
Quickly devolves into a nonprescription alternative to Ambien.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Everything is wrong pretty much from the start of this misbegotten adventure.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >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.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 4.7 (out of 10) based on 9 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Jay H gave it a5:
The plot is far fetched, the story is uninvolving and for a thriller, it has too many slow stretches. Well made technically, the stars are bland.
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.
