Choking on "Choke"
NEIRAD enilno edition
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The movie "Choke" is a sadistically filmed comedy involving a sex addict, a crazy old woman, and a bunch of your garden-variety psychos. The movie was great for feeling better about your own life while getting a couple of laughs, but I still walked out of the theater completely unsatisfied.
“Choke” features a con-artist Victor Mancini who pretends to get food stuck in his throat in a scam to score money from strangers – his unknowing victim’s gain something too: a warm feeling of saving a man’s life. The rescuers then proceed to fork over the cash to alleviate their guilt for the fictional injuries sustained while this man was choking. It’s Victor’s skewed version of service to the world.
The movie crams in quite a bit of content into the relatively short 92-minute run. Essentially, the film features this guy having sex with random people and trying to figure out who Victor Mancini really is because he never knew his father. The movie entails him being tossed around and his heart being torn out with every scrap of information he finds out. Victor is even told he is the second coming of Christ.
The movie had a very low budget of $3.4 million. It was actually screened at the Sundance Film Festival last February, which everybody has probably heard about from watching the first four seasons of “Entourage” eight million times. Being a Sundance film, “Choke” naturally incorporates some great Indy characteristics such as unknown actors and never overreaching to try to come off as cinematic art.
“Choke” is based on Chuck Palahniuk book. Some who loved Palahniuk’s previous work “Fight Club” may be disappointed with “Choke” since it never reaches the level of Palhniuk’s first cinematic foray. The message of the movie is foggy. There was also a disappointing amount of choking considering the film is called ‘Choke” – only a lame three or four choking incidents make it to film.
I’m not going to lie to Neirad readers; I expected a disgustingly good movie like “Fight Club” and got something along the lines of “Spy Kids.” Director Clark Gregg did the best he could with the meager resources he had during the super-fast 25 days of filming.
No, I have not read the book, for that you can read my colleague Meg McIntire’s book review in the November print issue. (see page 11) Thanks to Meg for plowing through the book because after watching the movie, it is hardly inspires one to pick it up since the film version was so lame.
