Deception

Deception is the kind of state-of-the-art, edge-of-your-seat sexual thriller that grabs you and doesn’t let go. It’s actually the kind of movie Hitchcock might have made.

Deception, a 2007 film originally titled The List and a movie 20th Century Fox was not going to screen for the press, turns out to be not so bad after all.

It is just a better version of a Zalman King flick: Think Red Shoe Diaries with talent on display instead of just skin.

Jackman and McGregor work hard, but a character-driven thriller needs characters worth driving. They and Deception are saddled with much more intricacy than intimacy.

Mark Bomback's convoluted script has plenty of hairpin twists, role reversals and double crosses, but it isn't weighted down with an overabundance of plausibility.

Deception has a placid beauty that isn't necessarily an asset, since "placid" goes with "thriller" about as well as "raw" goes with "pork."

It's a B-Movie lark that aspires to something more and falls short, and the less you expect in the way of believability, the more enjoyable it is.

We want to get caught up in the movie's wicked ways, but the implausible keeps deflating the dramatic. Deception? More like frustration.

Director Marcel Langenegger comes from the world of TV commercials, so the film has the sheen of a magazine cover.

From the nondescript title on down, Deception is a movie made to be forgotten.

This wannabe con mystery isn't fooling anyone. It's just a waste of some pretty pictures and decent performances.

Each major story revelation is so flagrantly telegraphed, when the revelations arrive they're more like fax confirmation sheets of what already came through.

Deception is one of those preposterous crime dramas decked out in faux sleaze, intended to amuse the mainstream with a fantasy version of how the wealthy misbehave.

Jackman proves the best reason to stick with a film whose title becomes an excuse to veer beyond believable psychological profile.

A generic thriller with a generic title, Deception is so predictable you could guess what happens even if the trailer hadn’t already given away just about every important plot development.

Simultanously silly and sleep-inducing, Deception eventually brings in blackmail, embezzlement, arson and the sort of mega-scale electronic money transfers that have become essential components of the modern thriller.

Intriguing only in spurts, Deception is a cat-and-mouse thriller so tedious, everyone appears in danger of dozing off.

Deception, an overwrought and ultimately silly thriller, won't do anything for Ewan McGregor's resume.

It's telegraphed so clumsily by the script that even a 3-year-old can figure exactly where it's heading. There's zero suspense or surprise.

It smells of foreign tax shelters that Britain's Ewan McGregor and Australia's Hugh Jackman are cast here as Americans.

The inevitable absurdities and coincidences of the plot are easy enough to accept along the way, except perhaps for the sex club, which is just a little too absurd to function as a plot device.

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.

It's a cold, emotionally-vacant place, but hey, at least there's plenty of sex.

Because Deception layers plot twist upon plot twist in an effort to make up for a lack of believable story, it's difficult to say much about what happens without giving too much away.

Predictable double-cross piles on predictable double-cross, leading to a conclusion so shocking, you could have knocked me over with a wrecking ball.

Deception swiftly devolves into another cyber-heist flick where the action amounts to typing in passwords and waiting for files to download.

The audience is never fully drawn into the ruse and thus the point at which the world is supposed to be turned inside out loses its impact.

The wrap-up is a little sloppy, but overall it's a thriller that goes down smooth. It won't make your all-time favorites list, but it won't leave you demanding your 88 minutes back.

The ulterior motives in Deception are so obvious that you'll only miss them if you leave your eyes and ears at home.

Only one scene features the kind of cat-and-mouse strategies and reversals that can make a convoluted caper click; elsewhere the film tries for the gleeful shock of a surprise party, but it's no party.

Deception is one of those films that leave you feeling vaguely dirty and wholly unsatisfied, a distasteful and wholly unbelievable mix of soft porn and obvious duplicity that holds not one ounce of emotional truth.

Everything is wrong pretty much from the start of this misbegotten adventure in Adrian Lyne territory, including but not limited to the strained mind games that drive the plot.

McGregor and Jackman turn in passing performances. But Williams shows all the emotions of a mime.

Everyone in the overwrought thriller Deception seems to be breathing heavily as they move through the film's succession of dimly lit rooms; it's as if the entire cast just came from some kind of business-attire nighttime footrace.

Barely advertised and only screened at the last minute, Deception arrives nearly as bedraggled as McGregor's accountant -- and will, undoubtedly, soon be at a DVD store near you.

Calling your terrible crime thriller Deception is like naming your bad cooking movie Food -- an advertisement for laziness.

Deception contains not one credible moment. Not one. Not a line, a gesture, a look, a staging, a situation, a location. Nothing.

Quickly devolves into a nonprescription alternative to Ambien.

Trading in shabby trickery, Deception proves painfully incapable of building a better suspense-movie mousetrap.

Every actor has a few titles on his résumé that he'd love to forget. So should you ever have the opportunity to meet Deception stars Hugh Jackman and Ewan McGregor, we highly recommend you pretend this movie was never made.