The Deal - Il compromesso

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")

Director Harvey Kahn was completely deprived of any inspiration in bringing to screen this political thriller story, happening in the corridors of the big corporate companies dealing with dirty oil deals, in a close but probable future where the western world is immersed in a war with the Arab oil-rich countries.

Nothing can really save this production. The screenplay is routine and full of stereotypes, not batter in complexity than a mid-level TV movie. Acting of Christian Slater is fair, and Selma Blair getting full time screen is quite promising as an actress, but not enough to carry the film higher. Directing is mediocre, it keeps the conflict being obscure and confusing at the start, does not make anything happening on the screen more clear or more interesting later, and moves the camera in a neutral and dry manner.

Routine stuff, nobody would have been sorry if this film was not made.

"The Deal" is an entertaining, but flawed political thriller.

Christian Slater plays Tom, a man about to close a huge oil deal. But everything doesn't go as scheduled, because blackmail and murder go hand in hand on Wall Street. Christian Slater is very convincing in his role. Selma Blair looks bored. John Heard does nothing to advance the plot. Angie Harmon plays a Russian spy. Her accent is off the mark.

The movie tries to be different because the climax involves not gunfire (well, there's some) but talking. It doesn't really work. But overall, it's worth seeing for Slater's performance.

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It's rough to call something people worked on so hard for 'uneven' but there it is. The Deal is, simply put, about a 'deal'. It's a Wall Street thriller. And at the other end of the deal is oil. A planet in trouble where the carbon monoxide level is the highest it's been in three quarters of a million years, where 50,000,000 people are estimated to be on the run from climate catastrophes within four years, where the top twenty two median temperatures have been recorded in the past twenty six years, and so forth.

It's been done before and it will be done again until the dependence on fossil fuels is ended, until the electric car is allowed to proliferate, until the oil barons get their hands off the automobile industry, until things settle down in the middle east, and so forth.

Everyone does a fair job in this one except Angie. Sorry Angie, but for reasons that can't be exposed here but that will become apparent to viewers you just don't cut it.

The movie's uneven because its thrill factor is propelled through at least half way by withholding important facts about the plot. And at that point you just have to see everything turns out all right with the usual modicum of plot devices tossed in.

This film feels like a 70s TV series and is disposable. For example, take a look at the plane scene with Selma Blair and Christian Slater. Why, in this day and age, yes 2005 is still 'this day and age' use such an obvious fake airplane interior cabin? Little things like that annoy me and lose me because it's so avoidable.

Moving onto the story - I thought I must have been distracted, as we often are today, but looking at my cell phone, because I kept having to rewind to the beginning to figure out when and how this slop started. It just kind of 'starts'. There's no character development, and Slater's foiled 'hookups' have no depth or development behind them.