Holing up in office till the midnight hours, alone, lost in work, one can lose out on a lot of super excitement. Luckily for Jonathan (Ewan McGregor) in Deception, something turns up from the blue: he meets an extroverted ladies’ man. Sometimes that’s all it takes, a break, for one to start discovering one’s hidden capabilities.
The speed at which two straight corporate males turn from complete strangers to best of buddies may appear a little odd at first. However, that’s how it is, generally, with introverted nerds when they meet someone totally opposite to them whose attributes they secretly admire.
The urge to have sex with a variety of partners of the opposite sex is not unusual at all among men. To Jonathan’s immense delight, he learns that there is a list of beautiful, glamorous, wealthy ladies too out there who share this craving. But you suspect from the start that there is something very wrong about this whole thing. The visuals are dark, and the music is menacing.
Once you get hooked onto things such as easy women, drugs, and criminal cash, life can begin to get a little dangerous. Sure enough, someone draws a gun before too long. They tell Jonathan, an auditor with access to sensitive bank account details, to start moving funds. ‘This is only the foreplay stage. But you’re already screwed’. Such is the risk that comes of, and price to pay for, living the good times in the easy lane.
The hesitant, furtive glances exchanged between members on the “list” while meeting up are extremely suspicious. One would have expected the couples to have a code for recognizing each other. Also, if their plan is be discreet, they certainly ought to be checking into the hotel together, and not greeting each other in the lobby and then walking straight towards the bedroom.
It’s nice to see McGregor in a fumbling role. But his character just does not come across as the type who is capable of getting street-smart tough overnight even if it’s only to save his own skin.
Marcel Langenegger’s sex-murder-romance-and-intrigue thriller touches upon the lovemaking desires of the “intimacy without intricacy” seekers. But a lot of things are a little too farfetched. It would have been alright if by the end of the film, the geek simply woke up in the middle of the night in his office, and realized that all these super happening stuff was just a figment of his wildly running imagination.
