2008. 92 minutes. Rated R.
Quote: “What would Jesus NOT do?”
Choke, a dramatic comedy, is adapted from a 2001 Chuck Palahniuk novel by the same name. Like Fight Club, Palahniuk’s last book-to-Hollywood adaptation, the plot is flashy and lurid. It’s definitely not a film for kids. It’s supposed to make adults laugh guiltily and think about philosophical realities that they normally gloss over, or at least ones that they don’t usually look for in light entertainment.
Unfortunately, Choke is no Fight Club. It’s disheveled and full of little diversions. Watching it is a lot like driving around a large but interesting housing development and getting stuck in every single random culvert on the way out.
The main story deals with Victor Mancini (Sam Rockwell) coming to terms with his past as the child of the fascinating but insane Ida Mancini (Anjelica Huston), who is probably not his mother. He also struggles with (or possibly enjoys) sex addiction. This gives him a lot of opportunity to flash back to many stiff, unappealing trysts. Flashbacks are a fairly central storytelling feature. More often than not, a flashback to a traumatic childhood event–of which there are many–is presented as explanation for Victor’s behavior. I felt like director Clark Gregg was visually jamming Victor’s past down my throat as quickly as possible (maybe he was crunched for time; Choke was filmed in just three weeks and doesn’t even make 100 minutes.)
Fight Club was a streamlined, pop-psych take on masculinity that was so bizarre that viewers forgot how unbelievable it all was. That movie bordered on the surreal and used some edgy stylistic gimmicks to make its point. Choke rips off those stylistic gimmicks and has no point. It goes for a similar kind of comment as Fight Club – substitute sex for violence – but does so without understanding its own context. Victor accepting his status as a nymphomaniac is not world-shattering. It’s pretty much where he was at the start of the film. Contrast that with he Fight Club protagonist’s eventual acceptance of his own inner psychopath. The result is ideologically frustrating. In Choke, nothing is built and nothing is destroyed, and after 92 minutes, it is no closer to being a better movie than Sam Rockwell is to being Fight Club star Edward Norton.
I’ve read reviews that praise Rockwell’s performance here. I have no idea what they are talking about. He deadpans his dialogue and occasionally manages to look bored even while having sex with gorgeous women. Love interest Paige Marshall (Kelly MacDonald) is not fascinating – her emotional motivations are so unconvincing that an actual declaration of her love for Victor hit me with the same impact as her earlier medical statements. I did not notice any chemistry between her and Rockwell. This was also disappointing: as two failed med students with emotional problems, their interactions should have been much more intimate, even more so after MacDonald’s big reveal. Then again, maybe I was looking for Fight Club‘s Marla (Helena Bonham Carter).
A number of subplots meander into the middle distance without really resolving or affecting the outcome of the movie. They include Mancini’s sideline as a choking victim, an episode with a neurotic fetishist (Heather Burns), Victor’s best friend Denny’s (Brad William Henke) mission to make a large pile of rocks, and a period of time wherein Paige convinces the inmates of a mental hospital that Victor is the son of Jesus Christ. Theoretically, these are hilarious vignettes. They sound great on paper. But on the screen, I found it all baffling and unconnected. Maybe if the director had taken a little more time with it, I’d have a clue as to how all the pieces of the plot tied together.
This is a mildly entertaining film that isn’t as edgy as it wants to be. The well-telegraphed litany of Big Weird Twists would have been entertaining in its own right around a campfire. But for sheer filmmaking, Choke is a pretty bad movie.
