The Deal

The storyline of "The Deal" has a good premise – the USA officially in war against the Arabs exclusively because of the oil and without any subterfuge. An American Oil Corporation requests the support of a credible Wall Street company to support a merging with a Russian Oil Company and get the supply of the necessary oil. An ambitious executive from Harvard is in charge of the deal and pressed by the Russians, the board of his company and his love for a colleague.

Unfortunately, the very confused screenplay is simply awful. It is almost impossible to understand the beginning of the story so confused it is. Later, the plot is disclosed and finally the viewer can understand the situation, with lots of betrayals and jealousy. There are three favorable reviews of this movie, and two of them are written by users with only one review issued in IMDb apparently to make a fake promotion of this film. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): "Contrato de Risco" ("Risk Contract")

The United States is in an oil crunch. So, when the banking firm that "Tom Hanson" (Christian Slater) works for gets an opportunity to make a deal with an oil firm that might have the inside track on some foreign oil, the firm is only too happy to jump at the chance. But there are risks involved, and Tom doesn't know the oil business that well. Add insider politics, the Russian mafia, along with corporate greed, and you have the basics of this movie. As usual, Christian Slater performs quite well. So too, does Selma Blair as his environmentalist girlfriend, "Abbey Gallagher". Unfortunately, I didn't care too much for the performance of Angie Harmon as the mysterious "Anna" mostly because her Russian accent seemed too artificial. One minute she's speaking in perfect English, and the next her accent is off the charts. Likewise, I thought the ending was too quick and convenient. But in any case, I still enjoyed the movie, and believe it's worth a look for those who like films of this nature.

THE DEAL was made when the idea of paying $6 per gallon of gas would spark international intrigue: now that we're well over $3.35 per gallon that price seems less than shocking! The concept of showing how big business and the government cover up the absurd under the table Deals such as the one that is the focus of this meager script is now so de rigueur that there is no melodrama or intrigue to this story. One must credit writer Ruth Epstein, director Harvey Kahn, and executive producer/star Christian Slater for caring enough about the chaos oil supplies and their impact on the world at large are causing, but the sad truth is that this tale is so ho-hum in that we all read this very story in the newspaper everyday that it hardly seems to merit a movie.

The cast is sterling - Christian Slater as a Wall Street type, Robert Loggia as the dirty hands dealer type, Selma Blair as the idealist, and Colm Feore, John Heard, Kevin Tighe, etc all try their best to make this flabby script meaningful. The star of the movie is the musical scoring by Christopher Lennertz...and that says a lot. Without an arc of plot line and without a bit of new information about the corruption at the highest levels of this country, this film just doesn't get off the ground. Grady Harp

Christian Slater in "The Deal". Good lord in heaven: what did Slater do in a former life to deserve this movie? He has made a lot of really bad choices lately ("Mindhunters", "Masked and Anonymous", "Alone in The Dark") but this is the kind of script even Oliver Platt would walk away from. A laughably bad script from first (and hopefully last) time screen writer, Ruth Epstein, who should have kept her job at Goldman Sachs. The pathetic premise of an oil conspiracy is about as thin as an Olsen Twin, and the dialog is twice as brittle; made doubly so by Angie Harmon when she tries to pull off a Russian accent (which, if I've done my math right, means the dialog has the octo-brittleness of a single Olsen, but I digress). Slater tries to crawl his way through a flimsy maze of corporate deceit, while woman after woman can't help but chew his tongue. Slema Blair is actually very good as his tree-hugging girlfriend who shows him the path to salvation, only the scene where she actually show him anything must have been deleted, 'cause I never saw it. Maybe they're saving it for the DVD. There is simply nothing thrilling about this thriller. They must have just figured if the stacked the cast with actors like Robert Loggia and John Heard they could ad-lib their way around the awkward exposition. Director Harvey Kahn, who has produced an impressive body of work but directed nothing of note, must have compromising photos of the cast. Ultimately, Slater is totally miss-cast as a Wall Street hack. They should have gone with an unknown and then maybe they could have gotten away with the low budget production values and pass 'The Deal' off as a student film. You have been warned.

I saw The Deal last night in Chicago. It's a dense film, with a lot of oil industry insider stuff, but very entertaining, and a really important film for people to see, given the path we're headed down in our country. Thought Selma Blair was terrific--best I've ever seen her. Robert Loggia, Colm Feore (my first time seeing him) great, too. Could have done without Angie Harmon, and would have liked the ending to extend out a bit further. I'd also have liked for there to be more intrusion of the reality of the $6/gallon world at war (which is the backdrop of the film) into the story--think that would have added even more punch--but none of that will knock a star off my rating, given the crap I've seen this summer so far--it's actually a 20 star by comparison. I guess I should say something about some of the negative critical reviews of the film. All I can conclude is that these folks are either lazy or overworked. In my experience, a lot of them have highly recommended films recently that are just garbage compared to The Deal. I guess the justification is supposed to be that these other films are "good escapes," but you know what? People already spend too much time in this country "escaping" instead of paying attention, and that's why we're in the mess that we're in. The Deal makes it fun to pay attention.