Reviewed by Richard Lee Zuras

Released 9/26/08

1 hr. 29 min.

R

Clark Gregg/ Fox Searchlight

Sam Rockwell

Anjelica Huston

Kelly Macdonald

Brad William Henke

Clark Gregg

There are some good things working in Choke: too many. There is some absolute dare in this screenplay: too much. Whereas Fight Club (the other Chuck Palahniuk novel-turned-film) was unflinching in its single-mindedness–fighting in but not talking about Fight Club– Choke meanders through a web of six movies worth of material in a scant 89 minutes.

The film centers around Victor Mancini, played interestingly enough by the capable Sam Rockwell. Victor is a drop-out who is oddly connected to the world through sexual intercourse, and caustic sarcasm. Victor is a sex addict. Addicted he says, because sex releases endorphins and endorphins kill pain. And Victor, one would surmise, seems to be in one enormous truckload of pain.

His partners are willing, even a woman who asks him to fake rape her–only to instruct him that it needs to be done on the floor, not the bed, and not on the rug, but on a towel she has neatly laid out. But that’s the kind of world Vincent lives in. His is a world of extreme disconnect.

Vincent and his pal Denny (Brad William Henke) work in an 18^th century re-creation village where they are continually hastled by Lord High Charlie (Clark Gregg) to stay “in character.” No matter, for Vincent apparently has no character. Vincent, it would seem, also has no true connection to his mother. With trepidation, he continually goes to see her in the mental institution–even though she believes he is only her lawyer. A kind doctor (Kelly MacDonald in her usual, understated role), who Vincent keeps trying to impregnate (it’s a long story), provides him some refuge until she turns out to be a mental patient herself.

It is in these scenes with Vincent’s mother, played beautifully by Anjelica Huston, that the movie works best. There is one particular restaurant scene where the young Victor, in flashback, sees himself on a milk carton and helplessly tries showing it to the waitress. It would seem that Victor’s mother is not really his mother after all. In fact, Victor is told by the “doctor” who befriends him that his mother’s diary–written in Italian and translated by the same good “doctor”–asserts that Victor is a half-clone of Jesus Christ (an even longer story…).

And herein lies the problem. I have only scratched the surface of the eccentric goings-on of this Royal Tenenbaums like movie, and yet all of this occurs in under 90 minutes. Funny scenes are cut disturbingly short, random edits destroy the building pathos, and a general lack of direction dooms the film to be more about its parts than its whole.

One can only wonder how good this film might have been if it had not short-changed the 300 plus page novel. First time director Clark Gregg is a wonderful television and film actor, and these characters do seem to have something to say. If only Gregg had allowed Choke more room, more time, as David Fincher allowed Fight Club (139 minutes yet 224 novel pages), we would have more to talk about, and would know exactly what not to talk about.

Bottom Line: 3.0/5.0