Choke
Cast: Sam Rockwell, Anjelica Huston, Kelly MacDonald, Brad William Henke
Dir: Clark Gregg
Rating: 3/5
Choke is another adaptation of a Chuck Palahniuk novel, he wrote Fight Club which received the big screen back in 1999 and is now something of a cult classic so this movie was highly anticipated.
Victor Mancini, a sex-addicted med-school dropout, who keeps his increasingly deranged mother, Ida, in an expensive private medical hospital by working days as a historical re-enactor at a Colonial Williamsburg theme park.
At night, Victor runs a scam by deliberately choking in upscale restaurants to form parasitic relationships with the wealthy patrons who "save" him.
When, in a rare lucid movement, Ida reveals that she has withheld the shocking truth of his father's identity, Victor enlists the aid of his best friend, Denny and his mother's beautiful attending physician, Dr. Paige Marshall, to solve the mystery before the truth of his possibly divine parentage is lost forever.
This film, as we have come to expect from Palahniuk novels, is a bit weird and demands your full attention to just understand what the hell is going on.
This is Clark Gregg's directorial debut and unfortunately it shows as it's not as edgy or as dark as you would hope it to be. I think the be all and end all is everyone was expecting something like Fught Club and it falls short, however in more experienced hands it could have been so much more.
But that's not to say that this is a bad movie Sam Rockwell, a disgustingly underrated actor, gives a great central performance as Victor who is desperate to discover who is family really is before his mother passes away.
And it's this undercurrent of sadness mixed in with the humour and the sex that makes this a real oddball movie. But it is his manic performance that really pushes the film along as well as holding it all together and can't help but like his character by the time the credits roll.
But there are so many thing going on in Victor's life that Gregg struggles keeping all of them under control, as well as shooting several flashbacks, it sometimes runs away from the first time director which is a shame.
Despite this Choke is possibly the strangest movie that you will catch on DVD this year but it is funny and Rockwell is great so it is very much worth a watch.
Choke is released on DVD 23rd March
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw