In
recent years author Chuck Palahniuk has broadened his range a little,
but for a long time after the success of his first novel Fight Club he seemed happy to churn out variations on a theme.
In a nutshell : a
few mildly shocking ideas, a heavy dose of self-loathing, a romance
between damaged people and a hip attitude was all he needed to keep his
readers coming back for more.
And that's the problem with Choke.
Based
on what now seems clearly one of Palahniuk's lesser works, it ticks all
the right boxes but never quite manages to feel like the real deal in
the way the book (or for that matter, the film) of Fight Club did.
That
said, putting Sam Rockwell in the lead of any film automatically solves
eighty percent of your problems and he doesn't disappoint here.
Rockwell thrives in his role as
a sex addict working at a historical re-enactment park who gets much
needed physical and emotional contact (plus money) from pretending to
choke in restaurants then letting strangers "save" him.
He
needs the cash to keep his fairly unbalanced mother (Anjelica Huston)
in hospital, where her inability to recognise him (she thinks he is her
lawyer) and his willingness to help out the other crazy ladies brings
him to the attention of a sexy young lady (played by Kelly
Macdonald).
Soon they are having sex in the hospital
chapel and she is telling him that her mother's crazy stories about him
being cloned from Jesus' foreskin just might be true...
That
is a fair bit to handle, even for a movie as obviously out there as
this one, and after a while the various revelations and plot twists
fail to register. It's sort of like a nutter sitting next to you on the
bus saying anything just to try and get you to react.
But Rockwell is great, and if Choke
had scaled back a little on the wackiness and given him a little more
room to play an actual person - it might have been a great film. 3 out
of 5
Choke Australian release: 30th October,
2008 Official
Site:Choke Cast: Kathryn Alexander, Teodorina Bello, Kate Blumberg, Jonah Bobo Director: Clark Gregg
