What a beautiful movie!

Some things I liked some I did not.

Excellent but underrated film

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

This has hints of Abel Ferrara about it (esp. the welcome appearance of the late and lamented Chris Penn from Ferrara's 'The Funeral.') I've seen this twice now, and am still not quite sure who really murdered Elizabeth. It doesn't really matter, I suppose, but there's a sense here in which style predominates a bit too strongly over substance. Michael Rooker & Tim Roth overact a bit - so the steadying presence of Chris Penn is helpful here. I'd liked to have known more about Roth's upbringing and so forth than we're granted. The scenes of him with his parents & friends are some of the best - all that baloney with lie detectors in dimly lit rooms becomes a bit dreary after a while.Nice to see 1) Michael Parks (one of the nastiest villains in Twin Peaks) - here confirming one's idea that psychiatrists and psychologists are easily more strange and conflicted than their patients, and 2) Mark Damon - most famous in American cinema from Roger Corman's Fall of the House of Usher way back in 1960! Worth an outing if you should ever get bored with the Pittsburgh Penguins, but hardly worth all the effort you need to expend in an attempt to 'work out the story.' (By the way, are all American police really like this?)

(Major Spoilers) The film "Deceiver" has to do with a routine interrogation of a murder suspect that goes completely haywire with the person being interrogated turning the tables on his interrogators.As were introduced to the three major players in the film were also given, besides their backgrounds and extent of their education, their IQ scores! By the time the movie is over the persons IQ's more then explains how they grasps the situation, or situations,that they ended up finding themselves in.The heir to the Wayland textile fortune James Walter Wayland, Tim Roth, has been picked up as a prime suspect in the brutal murder of prostitute Elizabeth Loftus, Renee Zellweger. Elizabeth was found dismembered, like the infamous Black Dalia back in the 1940's, with her body sawed in half and in two different locations.The two cops on the case detective Ed Kennesaw,Michael Rooker, and his partner Phil Braxton, Chris Penn,seem to have broken the case with Wayland suddenly changing his testimony, during a lie detector test, and almost-but not quite- admitting his guilt! You at first get the impression that Wayland is truly guilty and is somehow trying to construct an insanity defense for himself. This is all due to Waylands severe infliction of temporal lob epilepsy that causes him to forget what he does after he all of a sudden loses it. Despite Dr. Banyard (Michael Parks), who diagnosed Wayland's illness, warning not to as much as touch Wayland when he goes into an epileptic fit Det. Kennesaw grabs an out of control, while he's being interrogated, Wayland and almost gets killed by him. This has Kennesaw, who had no love for Wayland in the first place, to get really aggressive towards Wayland in trying to pin Elizabeth Loftus's murder on him.As the movie reaches the midway point Wayland's actions become more and more obvious in that he's somehow using both Kennesaw & Braxton most hidden fears and secret lifestyles, that has both men on the very edge, to his own advantage. Braxton a compulsive gambler is in hock to big time bookie The Mook, Ellen Burstyn, for $20,000.00. The Mook, like all bookies, a sore loser is furious that Braxton got a hot tip from horse-racing tote Jebby, Bob Hungerford, in a race where a 50 to 1 shot ended up winning. The mad as hell Mook feels that Braxton somehow stiffed her out the money that he, as far as I can see, won fair and square.Now with his, as well has his families, life on the line Braxton desperately needs the 20 grand to keep The Mook's henchmen from breaking both his arms and legs as well as doing harm to his wife and two young daughters! With no one to go for help but his partner Kennesaw, who can only cough up half of what Braxton owes The Mook, it's turns out that the very rich and manipulating Wayland is Braxton's only hope to settle the score with the Mook. ****MAJOR MAJOR SPOILER**** The stuff that comes out, from Wayland, about Det. Kennesaw is far more shocking in that he in fact was involved with the murdered Elizabeth Loftus, as one of her Johns, on the very evening that she's was murdered! This in fact explains why Kennesaw is so determined to have Wayland indited in Miss. Loftus murder! Or is it!The ending in "Decevier" will blow you away in that everything that you, as well as Det's Braxton & Kennesaw, thought you knew about the brutal murder of Elizebeth Loftus is in fact turned upside down! And believe it or not that's, which should have been the big surprise in the movie, what turns out to be the films only as well as major flaw!

Mediocre is what a five is. Noirish, certainly. But strains credulity and therefore didn't get me into it. Didn't feel a thing, believe a thing, care a thing. Sure, the idea that a person could be hauled in, and in fact the cop doing the lie detector test could be the killer is in itself plausible, but the way that the two cops played around with this guy and there's not lawyer for him that is too much of a stretch. Good moody cinematography as I said, and some excellent acting by Roth and the actor who played Kennesaw, but the plot is too unbelievable for this to have any meaning. And then at the end, to be alive again, what that would take, and for that matter what it would take for Roth to know everything he does about the cops, that's too much and causes loss of interest.

There are a lot of twists and turns in this film and the majority of the plot and the characters behaviour are not credible at all. It begins well but suddenly the viewer is catapulted into total confusion. The viewer is not sure whether anything or anyone is real. ..................SPOILER COMING UP................................. Personally I think that Tim Roth's character is bad. He is a rich boy who knows it and doesn't like anyone telling him what to do/think and thinks he is above the law. He uses his money and intelligence to do what he wants and this gets him out of a very bad situation. He is attracted to and thrives on an 'otherness' to his world of responsibility - illegal liqour, vice, drugs, murder.