Choke

Bringing a story like 'Choke' on screen is tricky business and really does require a competent director, like Clark Gregg (who also wrote the screenplay and acted). I haven't read Palahniuk's novel but the humour and world in Gregg's 'Choke' feels very much like one that Palahniuk would create. 'Choke' is a dark comedy. It's hilarious but underneath the surface there are layers of darkness. The film also touches plenty of complex themes such as trauma, dementia, sexual addiction, emotional numbness, desire, love and redemption which are smoothly included within the story. Yet, it is above all a comedy and while the characters appear as hideous losers on the surface, we gradually get to like them. Sam Rockwell is terrific as the messed-up troubled Victor. Only Rockwell could play such a character so naturally. In addition, he is supported by a fantastic Angelica Huston, a quirky Kelly MacDonald and a chronically horny turned romantic Brad William Henke. There's a hilarious 'rape' sequence with Heather Burns. I never thought I would describe that word to describe rape but one just has to watch that scene to get what I mean. The film is packed in a tight 90 minutes but I wish it was longer as I found myself wanting more. 'Choke' is clearly not for everybody but it is certainly worthwhile for those interested in adult humour and psychology.

It took almost a decade for a second movie to come out from the literary source that is Chuck Palahniuk. David Fincher owned Fight Club, making it a cinematic wonder, enhancing the novel and becoming a wonderful companion to it. Rumors swirled afterwards about all his other stories being optioned for film translation, but after 9-11 halted Survivor's chances and Invisible Monsters' progress ended, it didn't seem good. But here comes 2008, with an unlikely savior in Clark Gregg, and all of a sudden we have Choke in cinematic glory to bring the author back into the spotlight. I love his books and all of them have a pop culture, post-modern feel showing sensibilities that can succeed on the big screen. Is Gregg the optimum choice to help the cause? Possibly not, but this is a very narrative driven story without the flash and flair of other novels, so his inexperience helming a film isn't overtly noticeable. While it is not as good as the book—how many actually are—this film keeps the tone and essence intact, bringing to life the words on the page. It's subtle and subversive and kept me entertained throughout.

Gregg has been in Hollywood for a while now, a familiar face to David Mamet fans, and for all you kiddies, an actor in Ironman. The role he gives himself here is a good one, the stickler boss of the colonial theme park that our leads are employed at. It's a thankless role and definitely the straightman of the ensemble; however, it is his directing that is really put on display. He doesn't try to go beyond his limits and I commend him for it. Single-handedly saving the world from possibly going Palahniuk adaptation-less forever, I have nothing but praise for the man. There are some camera tricks utilized, most obviously the quick cuts between our lead Victor Mancini's sex-addicted visions of every woman being naked to their fully clothed reality, but it's more or less a strict, linear narrative. I do have to mention the final shot, which carries on as the credits play, a long take of two leads making out. In extreme close-up, the highly personal nature of what is displayed leaves you somewhat uncomfortable due to the length, but also happy at the idea of these two partaking in the action. It's the boldest stroke Gregg makes and, being the last thing we see, the strongest most memorable moment for me.

It's all a comedy from start to finish, but one laced in good writing and subtlety. There are no real laugh-out-loud moments, except perhaps the revelation of a man being blind, just a consistent journey of sarcasm, heartfelt humor, and genuine witty banter. Victor, played perfectly by Sam Rockwell, really breathing life into the character as I envisioned him when reading the book, is a man that goes to restaurants and deliberately chokes so that some unsuspecting Good Samaritan can save him. These people now have a bond with him, feeling responsible for his life and in effect send him gifts and money whenever asked or on the anniversary of their fateful encounter. As one eyewitness's account says, her son was about to be divorced until his sense of bravery at saving Victor made his wife fall in love all over again. This kind of thing is a common trend with our lead; his uncanny ability to be devious and evil yet always have the outcome end up being generous and profound to those he is wronging. No wonder the guy becomes glued to the possibility he may be the second coming of Christ—believe me, it's actually a plot thread, and one that holds the film together.

Rockwell's manic overabundance of life becomes a whirlwind, sleeping with random women at every turn, hanging out with his masturbation-obsessed best friend (Brad William Henke who hopefully will start getting more work after this), angering his boss by using 20th century objects in a colonial environment, and visiting his mother, who is suffering from dementia, that believes he is her old deceased lawyers. Only Palahniuk's warped mind could come up with this stuff, let alone tie it all together into a coherent plot that is interesting to follow through to its conclusion. A burgeoning relationship with a young nurse at the home, (Kelly Macdonald trying to hide her Scottish accent for who knows what reason), adds some conflict and space for Victor to finally seek help for himself and begin step four of the sex-addict program. Having a lifetime of pain brought on by the one person he loved, Anjelica Huston as his mother, keeps him closed off to the world, making it strange for him when he finally finds someone he can open himself to.

There is so much going on, it'd be tough to talk about without either ruining the story or ruining the joke's setup. Choke is definitely not for everyone, the humor is probably too risqué for some and the subject matter too eccentric and modern for others. Palahniuk, who has a nice background cameo at the end, uses thinly veiled satire to bring us into his surreal interpretations of reality and be able to find ourselves living there. It is definitely one of his smallest scale novels, as far as craziness goes, but also one of his most accessible. For that reason, and because Gregg deftly adapted it with a respect to the source material, we have a resounding success. Hopefully allowing us to be brought back into his world of miscreants and fiends with a piece such as this will mean the more out-there stories will finally find their way to Hollywood. Scratch that. How about to a nice indie company that will do it right?

As of writing, Choke has not yet been given official distribution, and will not get it for about another month and a half at least (depending on your location). However, I managed to see it at the annual local film festival. I'll bring this review up when the film gets a wider release, but for now here is my initial opinion.

Choke is the story of sex-addicted loser Victor Mancini (Sam Rockwell). Victor's main concern in life is to keep his demented mother (Anjelica Huston) alive and in hospital. He does this in the hope of finding out the truth about his strangely absent father. To pay the bills, he pretends to choke on his dinner in fancy restaurants and plays off his saviour's heroism for financial gain.

I think the majority of readers here are at the very least aware of the existence of Fight Club, the only other major movie aside from Choke to be based off a Chuck Palahniuk novel. Most of the people who will seek out Choke will do it mainly because of the connection to either Fight Club or the Choke novel (or both, as the case may be). Of course, I'll have to play the comparison game here, but it has to be said - Choke is a very different beast to both its source novel and its spiritual predecessor, Fight Club.

Anyone who's read Palahniuk's writing will know that his books are frequently dark, very twisted and somewhat humorous. Words like "diseased" and "cancerous" come to mind. It's this same feeling that infected both the Fight Club and Choke novels and made them perverse joys to read. Palahniuk's touch even translated perfectly in David Fincher's adaptation. With Clark Gregg's adaptation of Choke, the stylish darkness is traded for a far more conventional "quasi-independent comic" approach. Strangely enough, this seems to suit Choke even better.

After all, Choke is first and foremost a comedy. At a guess, I'd say it's roughly 80 per cent faithful to the original novel (more on that later) with a large number of jokes lifted from the novel. The laugh factor was a strange thing. On one hand, the laughs managed to stay more or less consistent, with none of the jokes falling flat. On the other hand, I personally didn't feel like anything was too funny. Everything raised a genuine chuckle but as for anything approaching "struggling-to-breathe" humour, there wasn't much there. It makes me wonder what's better, a comedy with consistent chuckling or sporadic bursts of hilarious moments. Not too sure.

Regardless, the film manages to be an enjoyable experience. First-timer Gregg manages to handle his duties (which include writing, directing and even one very amusing bit part) with confidence, balancing comedy with drama effectively. The acting is impressive to say the least. Rockwell manages to nail Victor perfectly, yet it's Brad William Henke that manages to steal several scenes as Victor's friend Denny. Another treat is the score, which is an interesting blend of different styles.

Choke not only manages to be an entertaining comedy, it also becomes a very good example of how to streamline a 300-page novel into a movie that's just shy of the 90-minute mark. The only problem with it depends on whether or not your sense of humour agrees with the film's, but if this film was already on your "to-see" list, that shouldn't be too much of a problem.

This movie left me in a strangely ambivalent state after I watched it, because I'm not sure if I'm judging it on its actual merits, or my expectations. Having been a fan of Chuck Palahniuk's novel, I was expecting something brash, frenetic and perfectly offensive, but in a good way. The problem is that while the novel was blunt and vulgar, spelling out every bit of Victor Mancini's sexual exploits in almost academic detail, the movie stops a bit short of pushing the edge and instead leaves a lot of it up to suggestion.

Another reason that I'm not sure how I felt about it is because the director took a unique approach to the work that I'm still trying to decide if I liked or not. You see, Chuck Palahniuk's novels have a very distinctive narrative style to them, and in Fight Club (also based on one of Chuck's books,) director David Fincher emulated it perfectly. I'm talking mostly about Chuck's usage of repetition with lines such as "I am Jack's colon," Choke's director, Clark Gregg chose not to emulate this and instead brought the text of the book to life without mimicking it's distinctive narrative. So if you're a fan of Chuck's work, this may bother you. On the other hand, it does help Choke stand out on its own merits and not feel like it's trying to build off of the success of Fight Club.

So for those of you who haven't read the book, how does it stand? Well as I said before, considering how much more graphic and indecent this movie's source material was, I think the movie missed out on a lot of its potential. I almost feel like Clark Gregg went too easy on all of the characters making them come off as sympathetic when they worked better as being completely hopeless. It's also not as funny as it could have been, since a lot of Victor's (the protagonist's) interactions with everybody from the sex addicts, to the people in the historic reenactment village to the people he pretends to choke for, were all summarized too much, and had much more potential for comedy. Overall i'd say this movie is alright, but could have been done better.

This is actually a review from someone who read the novel before watching, and since I'm sure anyone interested in this movie have had watched or read Choke novel or Fight Club, I won't make a synopsis of the film.

I'm going to start with the cons: I gave this movie a 7 out of 10 mainly because of its cinematography; there was zero creativity involved in it. From start to finish, you never get to see and let alone appreciate the surroundings in which the characters are. With this lack of creativeness, it seemed like the environment from every scene was a cheap set and not actual places. There's no introduction to the city in which Victor (the protagonist) lives, his work, the "mental facility", etc.

This leaves the movie with full of dullness and no life to it, switching from one scene to the next with just the actors interacting with one another with no pleasant detail to it. Some scenes could have been better OR longer (for example; the first choke scene in the restaurant), although nice, it seemed pretty rushed. And talking about longer scenes comes my third con: its length. This movie is almost 1hr and half and I'm sure if they made it at least 2hrs long it could have been better, but that's just my opinion.

The jokes are pretty faithful to the novel and most of them will at least manage to get a chuckle out of you. The protagonist sometimes narrate some scenes a la Fight Club which is a nice touch. The acting is very good and Sam Rockwell perfectly portrayed Victor Mancini as the reckless sex addict. Brad William Henke (Denny) seemed out of place in this movie, since his true character should have been skinny instead of tall and bulked. Same thing with Victor's mom Ida Mancini (Anjelica Huston) which they portrayed her kind of healthy instead of a sick, skinny woman.

Finally, the movie is very good and entertaining with its dark humor, but it seriously lack in the cinematography and length department.