Deception (2008)

Cast includes:
CHARACTER	ACTOR/ACTRESS	RATING
Jamie Getz aka Wyatt Bose	Hugh Jackman
Jonathan McQuarry	Ewan McGregor
"S"	Michelle Williams	½
Tina	Maggie Q
Detective J. Russo	Lisa Gay Hamilton
Simone Wilkinson	Natasha Henstridge
Wall Street Belle	Charlotte Rampling
Spanish Bank Manager	Javier Godino

Review

Corporate high-life, fashionable sex and first-class deceit are the ingredients in this looker of a film. Marcel Langenegger directs with a clear sense of style and mood, but unfortunately, there's nothing preceding or succeeding it; the film is all style and mood, making the ludicrous plot conspicuously bad once it invites thought. Hugh Jackman's character (and acting) is among the worst of its kind in a while – which is strange, since this type of antagonist has been done badly so many times before that you'd think they'd be able to avoid the deepest pitfalls. Perhaps Jackman realized the part was too far off to play it straight, and went for a slight over-the-top performance. Either way, his Wyatt Bose is a fish that cannot swim and/or a bird that cannot fly, and we can do little else but follow his trajectory, crudely helped along by Langenegger's ridiculously explanatory flashbacks and poorly disguised foreshadowings. If nothing else, we do get the action and suspense we've been promised, and a semi-clever twist in Madrid for good measure, before the film stupidly tries to pull off a happy-ending, starring the fumbling Ewen McGregor and Michelle Williams, who try to play it straight with a fairytale romance that is about as outlandish as Jackman's world.