6.5/10
Victor Mancini is a sex addict. He is also a medical-school dropout because he can’t afford to put his mother, Ida Mancini, in proper care after she becomes disabled. His day job finds him, along with his best friend Denny, as actors in a colonial theme park. Victor and Denny’s evenings degenerate into a spectacle of sham as Victor pretends to choke on food in high class restaurants in an attempt to earn the love and donations of an altruistic, wealthy person. Victor’s sexual shenanigans begin to suffer when he meets his mother’s new physician, Dr. Paige Marshall, and discovers that he may actually care for her beyond a quick getaway lay.
These are the adventures awaiting you in the recently released movie Choke, based on the novel of the same name by Chuck Palahniuk. Victor, played by Sam Rockwell, is a captivating character, one who continuously rights the problems of the world by doing the wrong thing and asking himself, “What would Jesus not do?” When the delusional seniors who share the same floor of the hospital as his mother catch him during his visits, they start to blame him for their own personal atrocities. A flustered Victor eventually lashes out, telling them that yes, he was the one who raped, beat, or broke them. The victims soon forgive him and eventually cherish him as some form of a messiah in their eyes.
The various situations surrounding Victor including his mother’s deteriorating health, the search for the identity of his true father, his separation anxiety from Denny (a recovering masturbation addict, who has begun collecting rocks for each day he doesn’t jerk-off, eventually compiling enough to begin building a mysterious structure), and his growing adoration for Dr. Paige Marshall, all begin to add up, proving to be too much weight for Victor’s world as it disintegrates.
Choke at its highest point is a comical take on Victor’s sexual deviance. Actor Clark Gregg, in his directorial debut, presents a moderately clever portrayal of Palahniuk’s vision of the filthy-minded anti-hero and his misadventures. In one particular scene, Gregg visually expresses Victor’s thought process as he tries to avoid an early orgasm during sex. He physically projects images of the various scenarios, such as marching bands and other non-sexy things, onto the back of the girl that is currently riding his “dog.” The scenes of Victor choking are filmed from a first-person perspective, like a “choke-cam,” as Victor flails about the room. His inner monologue is narrated while trying to determine the richest looking person in the room to position himself in front of in order to “save” him. These details certainly give the movie a load of charm and prove that Gregg has a bright future as a director.
The film nails Palahniuk’s brand of humor, although, it certainly was a stretch to even include the gist of the novel without getting a knock on the door from the dreaded NC-17 rating. When Victor walks past a woman, her shirt disappears on the double take. When he catches a glimpse of one of the nurses at the hospital, a flashback is shown of the two of them fornicating in various places throughout the hospital. Victor even scours the internet for sex, ultimately meeting up with a stuck-up woman that fantasizes about rape, and assists him in creating one of the film’s most ludicrous moments.
Films that are based directly on novels are often criticized for straying from their source material. Sometimes the director has to create their own version of the original story as it can be difficult to completely realize the author’s original vision on the big screen. Where Fight Club triumphed in this respect, Choke ultimately asphyxiates.
The film does a good job of representing the act of choking as a metaphorical theme and remains relatively consistent with the novel for the first two thirds, but as soon as it deviates from the book, the plot begins to fray. No resolve is ever sought from Victor’s manipulated philanthropists, which is touted as a major plot point. A focal scene at the end of the book occurs when all of the fooled contributors discover Victor’s game, and seek their own personal vengeance on him. Such a conclusion does not occur in the film, nor is one seen with Victor’s relationships with Paige and Denny. This leaves behind scenes such as the construction on Denny’s recently acquired lot completely in the dark and unnecessary to begin with. If the film were twenty minutes longer, it could have completely tied up these ends and presented a much closer vision to Palahniuk’s own, rather than living on with a seemingly rushed ending.
Chuck Palahniuk constantly jumps between conflicting emotions in many of his novels. Choke, which is presented properly as a comedic movie, fails to really hit upon the juxtaposition of these varying emotions because it has an attitude that is supremely lighthearted. Beyond a scene or two that bare a compelling bleakness, Choke passes up on the opportunity for the audience to draw an emotional connection to these characters. Shaun of the Dead, which is also branded as a comedy, is a great example of how the serious and lighthearted sentiments can be merged together seamlessly. Gregg should have taken a nod from this.
The characters’ increasing illnesses also seem under-represented here. Ida Mancini (Anjelica Huston) is comical in that she can’t recognize her own son and assumes that he is a different dead friend of hers each time. But beyond a verbal mention of her deteriorating health, there isn’t much that is done to show her body’s decay. Huston looks virtually the same throughout the entire movie (even when portrayed as being 15 to 20 years younger, in flashback scenes), which completely chips away at the fourth wall. Victor also becomes ill later in the movie (through a hilarious circumstance), but once again, there is no visual portrayal of this fact, especially in comparison to the graphic display Palahniuk describes in the pages of the book.
Choke is by no means a bad film. It is certainly an honorable first attempt by director Clark Gregg, and well-played by its entire, relatively unknown cast. Containing a handful of memorable shots and hilarious outcomes, the film spills over with charm and laughs. As soon as the script swings away from the novel, however, loose ends trip up the story and leave the viewer confused and the Palahniuk devotee disappointed. Choke certainly had the potential to become a great film, but when two hours of story are sqeezed into 90 minutes, not even the Heimlich maneuver can revive it.Choke
