Product Details

• Actors: Andie MacDowell, Liam Neeson, Viggo Mortensen, Jack Thompson, Paul Spencer
• Directors: Graeme Clifford
• Writers: Michael Thomas, Robert Dillon
• Producers: David Nichols, Haruki Kadokawa, Hiroshi Sugawara, Lloyd Phillips
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, NTSC
• Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Live / Artisan
• VHS Release Date: March 20, 2001
• Run Time: 90 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6303082564
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #326,933 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com With its attractive cast and "stylish thriller" vibe, Deception is a much better movie than a raft of negative reviews might suggest--provided that you can suspend (if not completely discard) your disbelief and go along for the ride. The first feature by veteran commercial director Marcel Langenegger, it stars Ewan McGregor as Jonathan McQuarry, a mousy freelance tax auditor who's taken under the wing of one Wyatt Bose (Hugh Jackman), a slick, ultra-confident Manhattan lawyer. We know from jump that Jonathan's new best friend isn't all, or even any, that he seems, and sure enough, when the pair "accidentally" switch cell phones, a series of credibility-defying events destined to turn Jonathan's bleak, lonely life upside down is set in motion. At first, it's all good, as the wide-eyed young CPA finds himself joining "The List," a Wall Street sex club that brings together lawyers, stockbrokers, and other professionals whose lives are too busy for anything more than brief, anonymous assignations at various high-rent hotels (exchanging real names is verboten is this world). But apparently spending nights with the likes of Natasha Henstridge and Charlotte Rampling isn't enough; when he meets the blonde beauty known only as "S" (Michelle Williams), the club's credo of "intimacy without intricacy" goes out the window, lust turns to love, and Jonathan is drawn into a protracted cat-and-mouse game that leads to murder, big-time corporate embezzlement, identity switches, and other nefarious activity. One needn't be Nostradamus to predict where all of this is headed, but that's hardly the point. Even if you don't buy a single moment of it, Deception is fun, flashy, and entertaining--and since when is pure escapism a bad thing? --Sam Graham

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars This is NOT Ruby Cairo, March 17, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Deception [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This is the edited edition of Ruby Cairo, which was released in the U.S. Andy McDowell objected to the nudity in the original. "Deceptions" is the edited version. Ruby Cairo is only available overseas.
I give it 2 stars because it is not the original.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Repeat: this is NOT Ruby Cairo!, September 10, 2005

By 

Jean Bond "Jean" (Seattle) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Deception [VHS] (VHS Tape)

"Deception" is the edited version of "Ruby Cairo," which is not a great movie but which is better than this one. It isn't just the sex scene that was edited out, but a total of about 20 minutes. The movie makes more sense in the RC version, and the sex scene, though dark and in Andie's case a bit airbrushed, is worth seeing, especially if you are a Viggo Mortensen fan. I don't think it was the nudity Andie objected to, though, or not entirely. The scene ends in an act of contempt that would sting any woman. It effectively lets you know what the man's character is really thinking, but it's brutal in a subtle way. There is also, of course, the (apparent) age difference between the two characters. He looks about 10 years younger than she does, even with a beard.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Deceptive, January 4, 2000

By 

E. A Solinas "ea_solinas" (MD USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Deception (DVD)

Some movies don't make sense.

Exhibit A: "Deception," a thriller full of money, deception and baseball cards, which started off on a promising note, but rapidly became too absurd to really deal with. The only saving grace is Liam Neeson, but even his charm cannot keep "Deception" honest.

Young mother Bessie Faro (Andie MacDowell) is shattered when she learns that her husband Johnny (Viggo Mortensen) was in a fatal plane crash. Even worse, their joint plane company is about bankrupt. But when she goes to Mexico to identify the body, she finds that her husband has been making massive deposits in banks all over the world. The key to finding them: Johnny's baseball cards.

At first, Bessie is overjoyed at picking up the vast sums of money, since she can easily support herself and her young children with it for many years. But then she learns that the accounts are being closed -- is her husband still alive? The search brings her on a parallel path to a kindly humanitarian, Dr. Lamb (Liam Neeson).... and to the ugly truth about where her husband got all that money.

Buried inside "Deception" is a pair of movies. Not one, but two. One is about a rather dim housewife discovering her husband's Big Secret. The other is about gunrunners, embezzlement and murder. Unfortunately, this movie is mashed together into a logic-free, tedious mess.

Despite the international travels, there isn't much scenery in this movie, except some dusty streets and one pretty shot of Lamb and Bessie smooching atop the pyramid (are people allowed to climb those anymore?). Even more time is devoted to the baseball card trick, which seems too weird to be possible, and then to the even more improbable gunrunning scenario.

Mortensen does a passable job as Johnny Faro, but he's frankly in too little of the movie to really register. And what little time he has is spent in sneering and leering. MacDowell is passable at best, embarrassing at worst (crying into the freezer?). She's completely outshone by Neeson, who lends surprisingly pathos and warmth as a humanitarian who finds out his charity is funded by gunrunners.

The only redeeming factor is Neeson. Aside from him, "Deception" is doomed to fail by a pair of improbable plots, and a dimwitted housewife played by a famous model. Silly and overwrought.