L'imbroglio

While fighting to enter in the theater where the press screening of the Roma Film Festival took place I hadn't great expectations for this film. The trailer looked so bad. More, I have never been much confident in Richard Gere's acting talents, but I must admit: in this film he proved me wrong. Appearing in almost every scene, not handsome as ever (he changed his hairline and his nose to look more like to the real Irving) Gere gives at last a good performance. I discovered he's also pretty good doing impressions - he does a great Howard Hughes, whose photos are constantly shown in the film and who, by the way, doesn't at all look like Di Caprio. Alfred Molina is also very good - hilariously funny, he's the best part in the movie. As for the supporting cast, there are pleasant cameos by Stanley Tucci and Eli Wallach. As for Richard Gere, I wasn't much confident in Lasse Hallström too - I found most of his films rather sappy. He did a good job in the Hoax though. The film has a nice "70s" look, with appropriate cinematography and a nice soundtrack as well. The one thing that didn't thoroughly convince me was the script: it started pretty well, but past the middle of the film it kinda loses its way and becomes more confused and repetitive. Still, a nice film. Gere fans, I'm sorry you will have to wait, since the opening in USA has been postponed to April, but the wait will be worth it. My rating is 7/10.

The Hoax is a screen adaptation of the true story of one of the most daring, bold, and intricate confidence schemes ever plotted. As a long-time fan of heists, cons, and trickery, I already knew the story before seeing the film, and so seeing the movie, I judged the portrayal rather than the story itself. Lasse Hallstrom does not make a great film, but he definitely makes an enjoyable film. Certain scenes aren't quite filmed the most powerful way they could be. Clean, nice, standard cinematography is used in scenes that have less atmosphere because of it. Other scenes, in particular the scenes of theft, lying, drama, and other intense things provoked by the dangerously dishonest mind of Clifford Irving, are given a thrilling, extremely exciting pins-and-needles feeling. In terms of the story, I learned a lot about it that I didn't know that amazed and impressed me, mostly involving the influence the scheme inadvertently had politically.

Richard Gere plays Clifford Irving well enough, but the entire time, I kept thinking of different actors who would've been much more becoming and much more intense. Clifford Irving was a man of dark, magnetic, manipulative vigor and depth. Gere plays him more dryly, as though Irving was virtually cool and carefree rather than coolly masking that intensity.

Alfred Molina, a scene-stealer as always, upstages Gere greatly as his nervous friend and partner in crime who is made to do all the high-risk dirty work, which translates into hilarity on screen.

The Hoax is a wonderful story and a good movie. If it had a different lead and broader scope in the directing, it could've been a wonderful movie, too.

Lasse Halstrom isn't out, as a film-making, to make really extreme and probing insights into what goes into a prankster/forger like Clifford Irving. Maybe it's because he, like I, saw Orson Welles's film F For Fake, which covered similar ground and has the only substantial footage of Clifford Irving on record and in full bloom with his BS meter going sky-high. That film, overall, dug very deep into what is to have forgery, a hoax, as part of personality. Halstrom doesn't quite get that, but nevertheless he's made an entertaining mini-saga of a man- or rather men in this case- who went to the edge of credibility and almost got away with the whole shebang. His story, as covered as well in part in F for Fake, is about Irving's incredibly smart and incredibly stupid attempt at passing off as his own the autobiography of Howard Hughes, then the notoriously reclusive and nutty billionaire with his fingers in enterprises all over the world. He passes off Hughes's handwriting to the publishers and lawyers as his, even as it's really Irving who wrote it all, and even went so far as to have mock audio recordings of Irving AS Hughes to get down in the book via assistant Dick Suskind. As the walls seem to be closing in on their scam, as well as Irving's marriage, it goes as far as mass printings of the book Irving presents- until the 'real' Hughes makes a press conference call (call, of course), to disprove the book altogether as a hoax.

Halstrom surprisingly makes his film light and dark in tone, depending on what stage the story is in, and it's even fun at times to see Irving and Suskind go about their risk-taking maneuvers to get all documents and information they can on Hughes, as if it's guerrilla research. Then as the despair of constant lying increases, and the threat of capture and revelation is nearer, Halstrom makes it more like a paranoid thriller. This latter part may actually be not quite as convincing- so to speak of course, as one can't be sure entirely what's true or not in The Hoax- because, simply, one might not see Irving so much as a crazy person ala Hughes so much as a kind of strange artist-cum-professional at what he does: to make himself believe the BS before he even feeds it to others. Scenes like Irving getting caught by Hughes's "secret agents" in the middle of the night are not as striking as Halstrom might have intended, even as all the while the performances are still good. And the realm of placing the story in context of the times is hit or miss; it works, to be sure, when going into the Nixon administration sections because it's crucial to the story (and, according to some articles on the film, is possibly really accurate), though putting in the footage of Vietnam and protesters and so forth are sort of padding to environment and period. The music, costumes, locations (i.e. Las Vegas) and simple political ramifications make it enough.

This being said, The Hoax provides the audience with some very effective performances. Gere, under the right director, can be terrific, and this is one of his best performances in years, as he balances out Irving's higher aspirations of wealth and notoriety with his latter plunge into confusing his own personality with that of Hughes, with suspicions of everything or anyone around him. The filmmakers wisely don't make Irving very sympathetic, and Gere plays this for all it's worth with moments of charm, tension, and delusions of grandeur played out wonderfully. However, if Gere is good, Alfred Molina is better as Suskind, Irving's collaborator and the real behind-the-scenes guy who helps make Irving's fabrications all the more palatable, like hiding documents out of the Pentagon or flying to another country to mail an envelope. Suskind, unlike Irving, ends up dealing with the hoax with more of a psychological/moral burden, and it ends up weighing on his conscience like a brick. It might make Suskind the more conventional character in the movie, but Molina makes him very real and more of the tragic case than Gere's Irving. Molina's track record, at the least, remains untarnished. Other supporting players like Marcia Hay Harden, Julie Delpy, Eli Wallach, and Stanley Tucci are better than average here.

The Hoax is a good treat in this month's lot of schlock and big-budget trash by sticking close to making it an actor's movie, and sort of a bittersweet take on what a hoax does in such a grand scale as that of Howard Hughes, and what it does to a person the longer and more intense it goes on for.

Lasse Hallstrom has directed a compelling recreation of Clifford Irivng's novel in "Hoax". It is a retelling of the risky writing of the fake autobiography of Howard Hughes, the eccentric billionaire from Texas. Richard Gere gives a satisfying performance in his torn character of Clifford Irving himself. He is also convincing in his ability to show his simultaneous success and guiltless feelings in writing his so-called autobiography. Alfred Molina gives an emotional performance as Dick Suskind, Irving's loyal friend and co-writer. Marcia Gay Harden is a genuine Edith Irving in this disturbing story. And Julie Delpy is exquisite as Nina Van Pallandt, the paramour that Irving drags into his ploy. It makes for a nice cinema, and likely a good read.

Now here's a movie almost doomed to the back pages of cinema history. Only playing at one cinema in my area and having grossed a mere 3 million in two weeks at the box office, it might just be only a matter of time before this movie fades away and is forgotten. That would be quite the shame as the Hoax is quite the movie, and a real treat for the very few people who are actually willing to give it a chance.

"The Hoax" is the story of Clifford Irving, a struggling author pitching ideas to the McGraw-Hill company. As his most recent novel is blasted by critics before release, a desperate Clifford promises his editors and publishers the story of the century, without having precisely figured out what that is. That is until he stumbles onto it (literally). Clifford decides to con the whole world into believing that the reclusive enigmatic billionaire Howard Hughes has commissioned him to write his autobiography.

What follows is an intriguing and enthralling romp through the mazes of lies and deceptions that Clifford and is "co-author" Dick Suskind have spun. Eventually, the fictitious story snowballs past anything the two writers could believe as revelations into accounts of fraud and blackmail begin to penetrate the highest offices, and it all begins to come crashing down.

"The Hoax" is a character driven drama of the highest caliber. The sharp direction and writing, and excellent casting make it hard to ignore. Richard Gere and Alfred Molina give career high performances, and the supporting Hope Davis and Marcia Gay Hayden just round the film off nicely.

This is one of the best movies of 2007 so far. It may not have as wide an appeal as other outings, but it's thoroughly enjoyable all the same.

4.5/5