| THE HOAX |
 2006 - USADirector: Lasse Hallstrom
- Reviewed by Jennifer
Richard Gere stars as Clifford Irving, the writer who actually tried to pull this off in the early 70s. After pitching the idea to McGraw-Hill, Irving teams up with his good friend and fellow author Richard Suskind (Alfred Molina). Hughes is the perfect target, because he's so eccentric that anything you say about him will sound true, and he's so reclusive it's very unlikely he'll come out of the woodwork to sue. Using stealthy means to acquire inside information, Irving and Suskind convince everyone that they're in direct contact with Hughes. Their book promises to be a monstrous best-seller, and they have the advances to show for it. That sounds interesting enough, but plays out rather boringly onscreen. There are lots of meetings with the McGraw-Hill people (including Hope Davis), lots of document-stealing, and a rather lifeless subplot involving Clifford's wife (Marcia Gay Harden) and mistress (Julie Delpy). Clifford lies. He cheats on his wife. He's in over his head. We get it. For the last half hour of the film, Irving teeters perilously on the brink of exposure. His marriage is crumbling, the Hughes empire is breathing down his neck, and he's uncovered a scandal involving the Nixons. By the time you've grasped that this is all pretty intense, the movie is winding down to its conclusion: Hughes speaks to the public for the first time in ages, Irving heads to jail, and Richard Nixon (paranoid by Irving's revelations) instigates the Watergate break-in. Wow, really? That's insane! I wish I'd known what was coming when this thing started. Perhaps the movie assumes that its audience is familiar with "the hoax", but as someone born in the late 70s, I could have used a little background in the beginning. It would be far easier to wade through the first 90 minutes of the movie knowing that we were actually headed somewhere historically significant. It's not a bad journey—nothing with Richard Gere ever is—but the majority of the movie could certainly be more compelling. DVD NOTESThe Hoax is packed with plenty of interesting extras including the "Stranger Than Fiction: Making-Of Featurette" and an interview with Mike Wallace "Reflections On A Con". Since the movie ends just as your curiosity about the real hoax is at its peak, it's nice to flip to the extras and learn more about this odd bit of history. Other features include Deleted Scenes, an Extended Scene, and Feature Commentary with director Lasse Hallstrom and writer William Wheeler or producers Leslie Holleran and Joshua D. Maurer. |
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The Hoax seems like a good idea for a movie, but the more you think about it, the more you realize it's sort of a one-note story. Imagine a writer, desperate to hold the interest of his publisher, pretends he's got the inside line on a Howard Hughes biography. He sneaks and steals his way to several giant paychecks, and then the truth comes out, he tangles with the likes of Richard Nixon and Hughes himself, gets into big trouble, and that's it. See? That's really more of a paragraph than a film.
