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.

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.

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.

The only Chuck P. book I own. It's a very funny book, about lust and salvation, and here it is on screen in...pretty good form. That is to say I was a little disappointed, with the ending in particular, which strikes a very different tone (not terrible, just different)....but that's neither here nor there.

Choke is the story of Victor, med-school dropout who takes care of his 70's radical mom now suffering from dementia and dying after years of drug use and mental instability. In order to pay for her upkeep, Victor pulls double duty at his two jobs, one as an employee at a Colonial American theme park, and two, choking on food in restaurant, so that those who save his life, will feel obligated to help him out with cash from time to time. Who would save someone's life, only to let them die, once you know their sad penniless (over exaggerated) story? Victor targets the wealthy and affluent, "You don't wanna get saved by some waiter", he says in one of many direct addresses to the audience. The broken 4th wall, reminiscent of Fight Club, is taken directly from the book, and one of the films stronger techniques.

In the hospital he meets, a young doctor, who assists him in translating his mother's diary, which leads to shocking questions about Victor's origins, and his father or lack there of.

Victor goes to sex addict meetings usually just to have sex in the bathroom with fellow addicts. While his best friend Denny, a chronic masturbator, begins taking his first shaky steps to recover, which involves romancing a Stripper and collecting rocks for each day his sobriety, "idle hands are the devils playground". The sex addiction and the need to save his mom, are the twin turbines that propel this film, and by the end they are both so clearly intertwined it escapes being exploitative.

I enjoyed this version of Choke, which was kinda of like Choke-Light, but still very funny, if only slightly missing the aim of the novel; the heady and vulgar mix of the sacred and the profane. That is to say, important sub-plots, and main-plot points get muted; we know why Victor chokes, there are more reasons than I stated above, but we don't get to see the people who fund his faints here, as we do in the book, and so that aspect of the story, seems a little disconnected. As do Denny and the rocks, another vital story element for me, got put on the back-burner here. Denny replaces one fetish with another, and most of the rooms of his house are filled with rocks.

(Actually they shot this ending, you can see pictures online, but decided against it, before release.) Okay, but everyone always says the book is better than the movie, I know, I know, I just had to get that out.

What's left of Choke though is commanded by Sam Rockwell, who is only improving as an actor, and Angelica Houston who needs no intro. While it's not as conceptually taught as I would have liked, its still really, really funny, and at a few moments, a bit moving (Ive got a personal soft spot for movies with visits to the demented in hospitals; The Savages is especially hard to watch), at least for me.

It's an allegorical sex comedy, but it's also a very accessible one, considering the weirdness of the material. It's a more personal story than "Fight Club", and almost an opposite ideology, "building anything", versus "tearing down everything", but told in the same sardonic writerly tone, weave come to expect from Palahniuk.

In the end, I just wanted more, but it was fun, and the story was brought to life, mostly just as I had imagined it when reading.

Also it's got the funniest and perhaps the only funny, "rape" scene, ever filmed (it is and it's not what it sounds like).

Choke tells the story of Victor Mancini (Sam Rockwell), a sex addict working in a colonial times reproduction. His mother, Ida (Anjelica Huston), suffers from dementia, and spends most of her time thinking Victor is someone else (mainly long dead lawyers) during his frequent visits to the hospital. To pay the bills, Mancini has a bit of a unique talent: he chokes on food in swanky restaurants, and practically forces innocent bystanders into saving him from death.

I read the book Choke a few years ago, thinking it would be same in vain to writer Chuck Palahniuk's near flawless Fight Club (and of course, David Fincher's incredible film). But Choke was nothing like it, and anyone going to see the film thinking it will be is in for a disappointment.

But like Fight Club before it, Choke is adapted quite well from its raunchy source material. The story is quite liberally changed in some instances, but in others, it is an almost literal recreation. Mancini is a well-rounded character, with bizarrely comic traits that are pure Palahniuk. I found myself almost crying from laughing so hard at the comic mishappenings he got himself into, frequently calling back to the events in the book. It was strange however that so little an amount of time is spent on the choking that Mancini has down practically to an art form, but then its off-the-rails, frank portrayal of sex was always much stronger. First-time director Clark Gregg does an excellent job making this character so true to Palahniuk's work that you can forgive him for glossing off something so integral to the plot (but at least it makes for a whole lot less convoluted, confusing and downright silly third act). Gregg's addition of the little idiosyncrasies of Mancini's lifestyle (small cuts to previous sexual encounters, frequent breast-filled day dreams) only further strengthens how close the film cuts to its source material.

But despite being 92 minutes long, I think Gregg could have done with a touch more editing. The film is not lengthy at all (many sequences practically zip by in the hyper-kinetic sense of Fight Club before it), but the film feels quite long in some instances. Despite their importance to the story, the flashback sequences involving a much younger looking Huston and young Victor (playing by Jonah Bobo) drag on endlessly, nearly losing their train of thought mid-scene. Some of the scenes between Mancini and Ida's doctor, Paige Marshall (Kelly Macdonald), also have a habit of dragging their heels. Some cuts here and there in these scenes could have only benefited the film. As well, Gregg's doing away with the third act leaves some subplots hanging in the balance, never to fully integrate themselves with the film as a whole. Non-readers may not even notice some of them (including one glaring omission), but it may strike those who have read it as quite odd.

The supporting cast is pretty well rounded. Macdonald does a great job in her scenes, as do Bijou Phillips in a small role as one of Mancini's co-workers, and Gregg himself as the lead character in the colonial times reproduction. I had failed to realize it was him when watching the film, but he brings a special greatness to every one of his character's lines.

I was a little disappointed however in Brad William Henke's portrayal of Mancini's friend Denny however. Not because Henke does a bad job in the role, but because he does not get nearly enough time on screen. He steals many of his scenes, and seems to know just how to frame Denny, frequently shifting from the downtrodden weakling of a sidekick, to the strong willed individual Mancini wishes he could be. Henke is having fun in the goofy role, and it is obvious that he is very comfortable doing it. He does not have a whole lot of credits on his filmography, but I can only help this role makes him a lot more accessible in Hollywood. More scenes could have only reinforced the notion.

Huston, looking much older than usual for the majority of the film, is excellent in her portrayal of Ida. She does not look to be doing much, but the emotions she conveys simply through her facial movements and expressions is enough to suggest that she is doing more than simply phoning in her performance. The role may not seem too tough, but she pulls it off without breaking a sweat. Despite disliking the flashback scenes, they only further developed her character into the closet psycho she is so great at playing.

But the movie rests on Rockwell's shoulders, and he is clearly up to the task. The breath of life he gives Victor Mancini is almost poetic in how personal it looks and sounds. No, he does not give the same energy that Brad Pitt does as Tyler Durdan, but this does not seem to bother Rockwell in the least. He plays Mancini just the way he needs to in order to make him a believable regular guy, suffering from addiction problems and his need to please his overbearing mother even as she is slowly withering away. You can see the pain in his face right from minute one, and never once does he let us take this idealism for granted. He uses it and characterizes Mancini with a great breadth of thought not regularly seen in contemporary American cinema.

While it is not perfect at all, Choke is a wonderfully valiant attempt at recapturing the nearly demented nature of a Palahniuk book. His unique voice is captured quite fluidly within the film, and writer/director Gregg can be quite proud of his work here. With the help of a great supporting cast, Rockwell practically lights up the screen in a way that only further proves his greatness as an actor.

7/10.