Choke (**)

Directed By: Clark Gregg
Starring: Sam Rockwell, Anjelica Huston, Kelly MacDonald, Brad William Henke, Clark Gregg
Seen: September 24th 2008

** Out of ****

Victor Mancini (Rockwell) is a sex-addict. To such a spectacular degree that he trawls sex-addict anonymous meetings for sex. And that is the less demented part of his personality. You see, he fakes choking in restaurants for someone to save him, and then the logic follows that the specific person will feel responsible for him, sending him money when he asks for it occasionally. How does this work? He gives these people the opportunity to feel the same life-affirming power of saving him again that they felt on the night of saving his life.

Sound strange? Indeed. That’s because the story comes from the mind of Chuck Palahniuk, the guy who gave the world Fight Club (the novel was adapted into a film by screenwriter Jim Uhls and director David Fincher). And Fight Club, believe it or not, is his tamest novel (in my humble opinion, and I’ve read them all, half of them twice), and to be honest, Choke was probably the one I enjoyed least. Sadly, the book outdoes the film, since the film does not capture what limited wittiness the novel did offer…

Victor uses the con-money to support his mother’s hospital care. Ida Mancini (Huston) is suffering from a form of amnesia, and can’t remember Victor. Victor portrays a different personality for her on each visit. One of her doctors, Paige Marshall (MacDonald), and Victor starts a relationship of sorts, but without Victor’s usual overdose of sex. Paige tells Victor she might be able to help his mother through stem-cell research, but that the stem-cells need to come from his mother’s ancestry. She volunteers becoming pregnant with his baby to do the study, but Victor can’t “perform” with her, maybe he’s really fallen in love with her…

Cue some quasi-shocking somewhat offensive revelations about Victor’s possible and eventual true ancestry through his mother’s diary, retrieved by having Victor’s best friend, Denny (Henke), pose as Victor visiting Ida. Add in the odd job Victor and Denny share, with a very obnoxious boss, played by director Clark Gregg, and the film just gives us too much unexplained/unnecessary strangeness and ends up trying and trying, but just never gets there. The word muse means, among other things, to think. The addition of an a in front of a word makes it a negative (as we all know). Choke then, is amusing, and not much more…